Money Talks, A Twist On The YouKnowWhat!
by Ace of Hearts
Summary: Chapter Twelve now up, as the ever dependable Tabitha attempts to land Rogue the hosting job...yeah right!
1. Prologue: They Worked Hard For The Money

*Okay, as promised, here's the prologue to _Money Talks, _delivered on time, I might add! ^_^ Now, none of the original characters are involved yet, but this prologue does do its job in setting up for the interfic. The characters that you've submitted will appear in the next chapter, which will be part one of, um, Part One, which is the whole Lance/Pietro/heavy metal rock band section of the interfic. 

*Which brings me to another interesting point. I'll be doing the Lance/Pietro section first, the title's...actually, I don't wanna spoil it by giving the title away, but anyways, I still need a helluva lot more characters for the heavy metal section, so can people _please_ submit some characters to be the front man, base player, drummer, producers, managers, etc--and make them as outrageous and crazy as possible, since this _is_ a humor fic and everything? I swear I'll be good to them; hey, if you need any reference for how this section's gonna turn out, just check out my Creed ficcie, _Oh, The Horrors Of Teenypop_ (and drop a lavishly praising review while you're at it! ^_^). Still, shameless plug aside, that should give you an idea to the degree of craziness that the fic is gonna be, so submit more charas for Lance and Pietro, and make them as crazy and outrageous and wacky as you can (hey, if watch FX, think along the lines of _Son of the Beach!). _Okay, enough of my rambling, on with the prologue! 

* * *

**Prologue: They Worked Hard For The Money**

The sturdy, army-green Jeep pulled over in front of a modern supermarket, and two teenage boys hesitantly stepped out. Lance Alvers and Pietro Maximoff exchanged uncertain glances as they stared at the glass sliding doors leading to the grocery store, before Pietro consulted the shopping list that Mystique had thrust into his hands.   
"Um...how are we supposed to carry all these things?" Pietro muttered uncertainly, staring boggle-eyed at the thirty-plus items listed on the single sheet of paper and never once taking notice of the nice, neat rows of shopping carts lined up to his left. Lance snorted, and flexed one of his arms.   
"Well, I don't know about a scrawny eighty-nine pounder like you, but someone as lean and toned as me, who spends at least two hours at the gym each day, should have no problem carrying as many groceries as Mystique and the Blob need," he huffed proudly, sticking his nose into the air. The supposed leader of the Brotherhood strutted arrogantly through the glass sliding doors...and promptly smacked right into a gigantic, fearsome beast with fiercely glowing eyes, eyes that had come straight from the depths of Hell! Lance took one good look at it, and decided within a nanosecond what the most manly way to react to such a dilemma should rightfully be.   
"AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEE!"   
Pietro snorted.   
"Dude, you so totally scream like a girl," he remarked, and the curious fact as to why Lance would yodel so at the sight of Happy the Hot Dog never even crossed his mind. Meanwhile, the kid dressed up as Happy blinked, before thrusting out a flyer and mumbling in a monotone that would have made Wanda seem sweet and cheerful, "Come to Happy's Hot Dog Palace, where all of our meals are served with love, and an extra dose of Happiness." 

Lance and Pietro split up, after Lance had recovered from the trauma of being attacked by a giant wiener (Ew! Not _that_ kind of wiener, you perverts!) and had insisted that he'd let out a manly warrior's cry, _not_ a sissy girlie scream. Pietro agreed to go to the bakery to fetch the thirty-two sugar-honey-and-marmalade cakes that Freddy had ordered, while Lance wandered off to the butchers to purchase some manly frozen meat. Seven hours had passed (Lance had spent five of those wandering aimlessly around, and the other two waiting in line for the butcher to prepare his order), and as Lance was busy yelling at the stupid butcher to hurry the hell up, a rather disturbing ringing sound started emanating from a strategic place in his pants. The ringing continued, and as people in line started to gawk at Lance, he snorted impatiently, reached into his jeans, and pulled out a...cell phone!   
"What?!" he barked into it, sounding rather grumpy and impatient.   
"Dude, I'm in India!" Pietro's frantic wailing came across sharply through the other line. Lance chose that moment to show off his extremely impressive vocabulary, as he screeched out in a keening, abrasive shrill that would have made Axl Rose proud, "WHAT?!"   
"I'm in India!" Pietro wailed. Lance, upon hearing those words and having his fear confirmed, reacted by repeating his greeting...only with a little something extra added.   
"*BLEEP*-ING WHAT?!"   
Ahem, the authoress has decided to very graciously edit out that part, seeing as how she wants to keep the story's PG-to-PG-13 rating.   
"Lance, will you stop doing that?" Pietro whined. "You sound like Robert Plant on crack."   
"What the _hell_ are you doing in India?!" Lance, having snapped out of his What-ing phase, screeched out, loud enough to wake up the dead.   
"Well, I saw this sign next to the bakery that said Deli, so I naturally assumed New Delhi, and so I hopped on the fastest flight to India--paying with (and maxing out) Mystique's credit card, naturally," Pietro bawled in a panicked voice. Lance grunted.   
"Fine, fine, I'll come pick you up," he grumbled, as he huffily stomped out of line and began making plans to catch the next flight to India. 

**Seven Hours Later...**

"...Bienvenidos a México..."   
"Oh, *bleep* *bleep* *bleep*! How stupid could those Spaniards have been to mistake Indians for Indians?!" 

**Seven More Hours Later...**

"Wah! It's so good to finally see a familiar face!" Pietro shrieked, as he instantly latched himself onto Lance's legs. Lance snorted.   
"Grumblegrumblegrumble**Getoffmyleg**grumblegrumblegrumble," he muttered grumpily. As the two started heading toward the airport, Pietro spoke up.   
"Hey, how'd you pay for all those airplane tickets? I _know_ we're all beyond broke, and _I_ took all of Mystique's credit cards with me to New Delhi," he wanted to know.   
"I stole all the credit cards from the Mighty Chrome Dome in the Sky, okay?" Lance mumbled. 

* * *

  
**Two Weeks Later...**

The Mighty Chrome Dome in the Sky--um, that is, Professor Charles Xavier, pulled open a mammoth of an envelope, scanning across all the figures strewn over the bills. He needed take one good look, before his eyes rolled way back into his head, and he fainted dead away. Scott and Jean, meanwhile, observed their mentor and guardian slip into a shock-induced coma.   
"What's gotten into him?" a concerned Jean wondered. Scott thought for a while, and then snapped his fingers, remembering.   
"Well, it _can_ get to be rather expensive having to feed and house twenty students, plus pay for the Brotherhood's impromptu trip to Asia," he reasoned. 

* * *

"I need to make a business trip to an undisclosed location and clear up all those money problems and lawsuits," Mystique spoke earnestly into a cell phone.   
"This doesn't have anything to do with your screwed up recruits, by any chance, does it?" the person on the other end of the line asked. In response, Mystique sighed.   
"Unfortunately, it does," she muttered, growling. "They've been racking up such a high credit card bill, and I've been getting sued for their raucous behavior so often, that it's making a number of the creditors and supporters of our mission quite nervous. I'll have to go over and clear things up with them. It could take anywhere between six weeks to six months."   
The other person nodded sympathetically.   
"Good luck," he said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"   
"Actually, yeah," Mystique mumbled. "Would you mind hiding all my credit cards and checkbooks? I don't want to have to worry about paying more bills while trying to convince my sponsors that the Brotherhood is indeed highly efficient and very discreet."   
"Don't worry," her confidant assured her. "I'll watch over them."   
"Thank you," Mystique mumbled gratefully. 

* * *

  
**Three Days Later...**

Jean glanced up from her magazine, stunned by the words that had just come out of a nervous-looking Scott's mouth.   
"What do you mean we have to get jobs?" the statuesque redhead wanted to know, a note of alarm creeping into her usually calm voice. Scott scratched his head, apparently every bit as confused as she was.   
"I mean the Professor and Storm have left to settle a lawsuit against him brought forth by Air India," he mumbled. "Apparently, Lance and Pietro bought First Class tickets, but because they looked like the dirty rotten scoundrels that they are, they were bumped back to Coach."   
"And Air India's now suing the Professor why...?" Jean let her voice trail off questioningly. Scott looked uncomfortable as he prepared to utter the next part of his explanation.   
"Um, before I say anything, will you promise not to get all squeamish on me?" he muttered nervously. Jean shrugged.   
"Sure," she agreed pleasantly. Scott cleared his throat, fidgeting around, but finally coughed up the answer.   
"Well, it turned out that the Toxic Twins had snuck aboard enough alcohol to knock out the U.S. Navy, got ridiculously drunk, and turned into Grade A assholes," he muttered. "And while Lance harassed the stewardesses and started throwing plastic cups and plates around, Pietro, who then apparently discovered that he can't handle any liquor, found out he had to relieve himself--really badly."   
"Oh, no," Jean groaned, clapping her hand against her forehead and already knowing what was about to happen.   
"Yes," Scott growled, pulling at his collar. "The bathrooms in Coach had long lines, and he tried to convince the stewardess to let him into the First Class bathroom--but she refused, and Pietro, who couldn't hold it in any longer, decided to relieve himself in the next best place."   
Jean gasped.   
"You mean..." she started to guess, and Scott nodded dismally.   
"Yes," he moaned. "Pietro proceeded to take a piss in the kitchen sink!"   
"Oh, my God..." Jean lamented.   
"And since they'd charged the tickets to Professor Xavier's credit cards, guess who gets the blame?" Scott muttered bitterly.   
"So, about the lawsuit..." Jean started to say.   
"The Professor and Storm have to travel all the way to Air India's headquarters in D.C., and since they've been sued for millions of dollars, they can't afford to pay for our expenses back home," Scott explained. "Hank's going to be in Manhattan for the next several months, Logan's God knows where, and it looks like we're going to have to fend for ourselves for a while."   
Jean shrugged.   
"Well...if anything that being one of the X-Men's taught us, it's to be resourceful," she murmured comfortingly. "We'll pull through." Getting up, she added, "I'll go break the bad news to the other guys."   
"Right," Scott replied. "I'll go buy a bunch of newspapers, and we can all start looking for jobs right away." 

* * *

Meanwhile, over at the Brotherhood home, the newly-dubbed "Toxic Twins" and Co. were going through the same dilemma as the X-Men, having just found out their supposed guardian had ditched them and left them penniless. Unlike Scott and Jean, however, the Brotherhood was handling being completely broke a bit harder than one would expect.   
"Did you find them?" Pietro asked anxiously. Lance shot him an annoyed glare.   
"No," he gritted out through clenched teeth.   
"Well, keep looking!" Pietro fretted, and continued on making a complete mess of Mystique's immaculate room. Just then, Wanda emerged from the basement.   
"Not there," she grunted coldly. Pietro groaned, one of Mystique's leather tops tangled all over his silver hair. He looked hopefully at Fred and Todd as the latter returned from the kitchen, but Todd remained silent while Freddy remorsefully shook his head and bit into a jelly-filled donut. Pietro wailed.   
"What are we gonna do?" he fretted in a shrill, high-pitched voice. "We still can't find Mystique's stash, and we've already gotten our gas and water cut off! The electricity's bound to be next, and I don't know what I'd do without my hair dryer to make my gorgeous silver mane as perfect and lustrous as it rightfully should be!"   
"Why don't we do what logical, normal human beings would do?" Wanda suggested. Pietro shot her a stupid look.   
"You mean apply to welfare?" he asked hopefully. Lance blanched visibly at the thought.   
"What! No way! What will Kitty think of me if I have to seek financial help from a bunch of soccer moms who worship Martha Stewart?!" he bellowed. Wanda shook her head, looking disgusted with both's reactions to her words.   
"No, not welfare," she grunted, and was about to say something more when her oh so charming brother cut her off again.   
"You mean rob Baldy for all his cash?" he guessed. Lance looked like he would have a heart attack if that were to happen.   
"What! No way! What will Kitty think of me if I have to mug some crippled know-it-all bald guy who just happens to be her guardian?!" he shrieked. Wanda's eyebrow twitched.   
"No, not Xavier either," she muttered, but before she could say anything else, Pietro cut her off again.   
"You mean--" he started to say, then eeped when he found himself staring down at Wanda from his so very relaxing position, a good ten inches off the ground and being throttled by his furious sister.   
"Pietro, shut up!" Wanda growled, nearly strangling her twin in her zeal. Pietro's blue eyes widened, but for once he stayed silent. Wanda, satisfied that she could at last continue, finally brought forth her suggestion.   
"What I was going to say," she began, "is to get jobs."   
Dun dun dun! 

* * *

*Okay, now that the prologue is over, remember that you can still submit as many characters as you want, for any of the sections. I'll be officially closing the "auditions" for Lance and Pietro on Wednesday, which is when I'll have picked the characters and posted the cast list, but aside from those two, submissions are still as open as ever for the other characters, all the way up until their section in the interfic is up. So submit away, especially for Lance and Pie-Pie--um, I mean, Pietro (thinks she's been hanging around the other crazed fangirls for too long!)--cause I still need characters for that section of the interfic, especially for the managers, producers, and reporter. And, since I tend to write crazy, senseless humor fics, make them as outlandish and wacky as possible; normal people aren't fun to write about! *pouts* 


	2. Part I: A Motley Crew No, Really!

*Hey, it's the first chapter of _Money Talks,_ officially kicking off my interactive fic! Yay! Anyways, this first chapter's just to lay the ground work for Part I and introduce all the original characters, since...well, I can't really expect to throw in a bunch of OC's and just expect the readers to immediately warm up to them and know everything about them ^_^. So...enjoy! And please review. 

* * *

**Part One: (A) Motley Crew (No, Really!)**

"I can't believe my ultra-scary twin sister is making us get jobs!" Pietro huffed, grumpily working his way through a high stack of newspapers. Lance, sitting across from him on a tattered red couch and holding a bright orange marker, glanced up from his own cluster of Classifieds long enough to scowl and snap at the frazzled silver-haired youth, "Shut up, will you? You're the one who got us into this, maxing out Mystique's credit cards and then sending our only source of money scramming by pulling an Izzy!" Pietro stopped looking at his normally flawless, now ink-blackened hands in terror for a few seconds, long enough to scrunch up his perfect nose and demand in a confused voice, "Don't you mean pulled an Ozzy?" Now it was Lance's turn to look puzzled, as he repeated deliberately, "No, I mean pulled an Izzy." He paused for a while, before further explaining, "You know, Izzy Stradlin' of Guns N' Roses? He was always the real quiet guy, totally press-shy...and then you find out he was also the Gunner who's pissing in public and shit like that!"   
Pietro frowned.   
"My, my, don't tell me you try to kiss Miss I'm-So-Pure-And-Wholesome Kitty Pryde with that potty mouth of yours," he clucked distastefully, like a scolding mother. "And anyways, isn't Ozzy Osbourne the guy who bit off the head of bats and relieved himself on historical monuments in public?" Lance irritably slashed a bright orange streak across a possible job option, before grunting, "Okay, fine, so you pulled and Izzy-slash-Ozzy. Now, can we get back to looking for jobs?"   
"Fine," Pietro grumbled, settling back to his newspapers and scanning across the many positions available listed on the Classifieds section. "Hey, how about professional stuntmen?" Lance glanced up from his own newspapers, and rolled his eyes.   
"How many times do I have to tell you, Maximoff, we're not looking for a challenge here," he snapped. "Listen, I had to work back in Chicago to pay for my last semester of school there, and it wasn't a pretty thing. I've got experience with that working crap, and believe me, the last thing you want to do when you're trying to get some quick cash is to get a challenging job!"   
"Really, why?" Pietro wanted to know, confused.   
"Because a challenging job is just a nice way of saying a hard job, and we don't want to begin our professional careers yet, we just need some money to survive! Now, Wanda's already found herself one of those job things, right?" Lance demanded, changing the subject. Pietro shrugged.   
"I think so," he mumbled. "We're not exactly on the best of terms, ya know, but I'm pretty sure she muttered something about having found herself a nice office job where she would be earning good money by helping out clients."   
Lance's eyebrows nearly flew off his forehead when he heard those words, as he gasped, "No way! You mean she's a lawyer?!"   
"Eh, who knows," Pietro muttered, before whining, "I don't care; can we get back to our pathetic non-existent careers now?"   
"Sure, sure," Lance grumbled, before his eyes lit up as he zoomed in on a particular job listing. "Hey! How about fry cooks at the local Happy's Hot Dog Palace? We'd get free hot dogs!"   
Pietro scrunched up his nose, thinking about it.   
"Naw," he finally said. "I heard they just merged with Chubby's Cheeseburger Castle, and are now cutting back on a lot of stuff--including real beef in their hot dogs and hamburgers, meaning we'd be sucking on thawed-out meat-like patties if we accepted their free employees' meals. Besides, the pay really sucks, anyway."   
Lance shrugged.   
"Okay, then," he muttered. "Well, keep looking; there's bound to be _something_ good out there!" 

* * *

Cue over to a shocking pink, two-story stucco apartment complex, overlooking a poorly-attended swimming pool and surrounded by a badly rusted chainlink fence and a few sickly-green trees scattered here and there. Suddenly, from inside the apartment marked 666 (-_^) in peeling metallic blue paint, a balding little man with a growing pot belly and a hideously tacky brown plaid coat bearing the tag of Apartment Manager slammed the cracked yellow wooden door wide open and darted out as fast as someone of his weight possibly could, screaming bloody murder and followed by a torrent of horrible screechings of a half dozen electric guitars and literally an avalanche of bottles of cheap wine and beer cans. A slim, pretty brunette, her long chestnut hair swept back and wearing a dark pink tank top and ripped denim shorts, glanced out helplessly after the terrified apartment manager, giving a tired sigh, before turning to the cordless phone cradled between her shoulder and cheek and deciding that her current conversation was more important than appeasing the landlord.   
"All right, all right," she murmured soothingly into the mouthpiece, sounding like a mother trying to hush down her scared child. "Listen, I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Hudson, I swear it won't happen again, please, just give the band a second chance, they're on the brink of signing a record deal, and--" She paused, as the person on the other end of the line abruptly cut her off. Listening to his angry words and tiredly blowing away a piece of hair that had fallen into her eyes, she began to apologize, "Yes, I know they showed up two hours late and stoned out of their minds, but once they took the stage, even _you_ have to admit that they blew the crowd away! I mean, the fact that they later got horrifically drunk and proceeded to start a riot, scare away the go-go dancers, loot the liquor cabinets, set fire to the stage, and destroy half your club shouldn't mean _too_ much if they're able to draw sell-out crowds night in and night out!" She paused again, allowing Mr. Hudson to blow off some more steam and threaten to sue their asses off for the ten millionth time, before realizing with a tiny degree of satisfaction that even the irate club owner had to admit that the band--despite its drunken rioting ways--was the biggest draw to have ever graced his rock & roll bar for the last ten years.   
"I'm giving you and your pyromaniac madmen one last chance, Miss Falls," Mr. Hudson finally growled. "I mean it; don't blow it, or else the band is fired! Again!"   
"Of course, of course," Jennifer Falls hastened to reassure him. "Don't worry, Mr. Hudson, this time, I promise you the band isn't going to be trying to burn your bar to the ground or anything!" Switching off the cell phone and realizing in dismay that, out of all the times the band had been fired over the last six months since they'd been employed by Mr. Hudson's rock & roll bar, Valentino's--and that meant at least once every other day--the frazzled club owner probably meant it this time. Jennifer sighed, and ran a hand through her hair, thinking to herself that at the rate things were going, she'd probably end up with a headful of gray tresses before her twenty-first birthday. She turned around to face the band, stumbling drunkenly about like stoned frat boys after a particularly rough weekend party, and thought about how to break the news to them that this time, it was absolutely necessary they behave at their gig. 

It didn't take Jennifer too long to realize that getting the band to behave was a lost cause. Lead singer and front man Rikki Stixx--and, as far as Jennifer knew, that _was_ his real name, seeing as how she'd never heard anyone, not even his older sister whenever she visited (which was about once in a blue moon) call him by another, more normal name--was standing in front of a cracked full-length mirror, admiring himself. Specifically, his hair, which Jennifer had heard was originally a very pretty blonde color, before Rikki had gone ahead and gotten a horrendous dye job, and then proceeded to dump about a gallon of hairspray and mousse on top of his now steel-black locks in his pathetic attempt to style it like one of the guys from Mötley Crüe. Naturally, he had failed miserably in his quest, and wound up with a headful of crappily dyed black hair that looked as though someone had set off a bug bomb in it. However, Rikki wasn't quite aware just how ridiculous his hair looked, and was now displaying his mini-planet-sized ego by preening in front of the full-length mirror, striking rock star poses and hollering at the top of his lungs, "I'm the King of the World, bay-bee!" 

Then there was bassist Morgan Williams, a female, sixteen-year-old Mini-Me of Tommy Lee--except with purple hair and an unending disdain for blonde bombshells who skanked around with rock stars and had their breasts augmented each year. Sometimes, the quietly thoughtful Jennifer winced just by looking at Morgan--her punkish, dyed purple hair, her numerous tattoos of anything ranging from the Van Halen logo on the small of her back to the brilliant black-and-gold Chinese dragons snaking around her lower arms, to the silvery piercings all over her face and body, including three on each ear, a tongue ring, a silver bar on her belly-button, pierced nostrils and eyebrows, and God only knew where else. What was especially scary was the fact that Morgan Williams stood at barely an inch or two over four foot eight. In other words, she was a shrimp, but given a choice of who could better scare off a lowly mugger on a dark alley, Jennifer would readily pick Mini-Me Morgan over Rock Star Rikki any day. 

She _would_ have gone with drummer Jericho Locklear--at six foot five, he was tall, tanned, and lean, with nice muscle definition, and looked like he could more than hold his own in a street fight. Of course, there _was_ also the fact that Jericho suffered from what Jennifer called Diamond Dave Syndrome--it seemed as if he had not only inherited the former Van Halen front man's famous golden locks of the early eighties, but had also gotten the whole flamboyant pretty boy clown personality as well. As far as Jericho went, in most people's opinions, he would probably make a better front man that Rikki Stixx would...but then said people would hear Jericho singing in the showers (most of those people turned out to be groupie wannabes who would sneak into the pigsty of an apartment to try and get a peak of General JoJo--served them right, Jennifer always said), and their opinions invariably changed to that of Rikki being the far better choice for the lead singer. 

Jennifer shook her head. She must have had taken far more pity in this motley crew than was good for her health. Making a mental note to never feel sorry enough for pathetic screwballs to try and help them out again, she turned around to face the band, scattered all over the trashed living room, cupped her hands around her mouth, and hollered, "All right, listen up! I smoothed things over with Mr. Hudson over the phone, and the band's going to perform at Valentino's tonight at nine o' clock!" Jericho turned around from where he was standing, admiring his perfect tan and brushing his perfect long blonde hair in front of a full-length mirror that Rikki wasn't hogging, a huge boyish grin on his face as he cheered, "Hey, way to go Jacqueline!" Jennifer bristled.   
"My name's Jennifer, you blonde bimbo!" she fumed, wondering how someone could be so airheaded that he couldn't remember a simple, perfectly normal name after living with her for the past two years. Jericho, meanwhile, flashed another boyish grin, chirping, "Gotcha, Jasmine!" Jennifer didn't know whether to slap the living daylights out of him, or slap her own forehead in frustration, before Morgan, ever the hyper-active little bundle of energy, darted up from where she was, struggling to balance her heavy bass guitar across her tiny shoulders, and started jumping up and down on the ripped, dirty pink carpet, squealing, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I can't believe we got a gig, this is so cool, I've hella got to call Trina, and Bry-Bry, and Dany, and Sly, and Amber, and Dee, and..." Jennifer interrupted her before Morgan worked her way through all the people she'd ever met.   
"Listen, you can call your friends later, but right now, I really need to lay down some rules about your gig tonight...Hey! Wait a minute!" Her face scrunched up as she suddenly thought of something. Going over the list of names that Morgan had gone through--all of them former band mates who'd gotten scared away from the band for good--Jennifer wondered out loud, "Morgan, kiddo--since when did you know someone called Dee?" Morgan stared back at her with wide blue eyes, an expression that would have been adorable, especially on someone of her size, had it not been for all the piercings and tattoos.   
"You know, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister?" she chirped. "The Sisters also hailed from New York, so I figured we'd all have something in common with them--except for the clown makeup, big hair ('cept in Rikki's case), glam gimmick, money, success, and...oh, yeah, the whole eighties thing, where they're all old and wrinkled now, ew!" Jennifer sighed, beginning to feel an incoming migraine.   
"Never mind, I'm sorry I asked," she mumbled. Clearing her throat and trying to steer the topic back to the gig at Valentino's that night, she added, "Listen guys, Mr. Hudson's giving the band one last chance, and if you get fired right now while you're on the brink of signing a record deal, it's not gonna look too good on your resume, especially since the whole heavy metal movement died out in the eighties, and you're lucky you can draw such a huge crowd, which is the only reason you haven't been permanently thrown out of Valentino's yet. Therefore, please, please, _please_ show up on time tonight, no drinking or drug-taking or sleazing around with groupies--at least until after the gig when you're back here at the apartment--and try to keep the swearing down to the vocabulary of a Long Island truck driver's."   
"Blah blah blah," Rikki snapped rudely from where he was, still preening in front of the full-length mirror.   
"Hey, don't worry Giselle, we'll be fine," Jericho spoke up lazily from in front of his own cracked mirror. By then, Jennifer had already given up on Jericho _ever_ learning her name.   
"Fine, fine, so I'm Giselle now," she sighed. "But still, this is really important, I mean, all the record executives will be watching your performance tonight at Valentino's; this gig could literally make or break you, and...and I've just realized that not all of you are here. Where are the guitar players?" Jennifer placed her hands on her hips and tried to look stern, as she scrutinized each and every band member. Rikki peered boredly at his nails, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "All hail the King of the World, bay-bee!", Morgan eeped and peeked up at their manager from underneath her dark lashes, and Jericho just stared stupidly back at the pretty lady who always seemed to be trying to tear her hair out in frustration for one reason or another.   
"Wait a minute...All right, what happened to the guitarists?" Jennifer demanded, after searching the entire pigsty that the band called an apartment and detecting no other hint of life that could possibly survive underneath the mountains of unwashed black leather pants and empty beer cans.   
"Um...you mean Amber?" The guilty-looking Morgan seemed to be the only band member who had a remote idea of what Jennifer was talking about. Jennifer crossed her arms over her chest.   
"Yes, I mean Amber, as in your lead guitarist Amber Crowley?" she hissed through clenched teeth. A frightened Morgan babbled out, "Well, you see, she and Rikki were secretly going out, but then they broke up when Rikki stole her hairspray for a local magazine photo shoot, and then they got into this big fight, and then Amber started pulling on Rikki's hair, and then so Rikki tried to choke her with her cape thingie, and then I tried to get Jericho to stop them but he was afraid to muss his perfect hair, which by the way, I have to admit really _is_ awful pretty; you know, it's not fair that a guy has prettier hair than me, I mean, I'd sell my soul to have long, pretty blonde hair like Jericho's, and did you know that he spends at least two hours in the showers? Yeah, he uses like this special shampoo that smells like coconut, and then this conditioner, and then he uses kiwi extract, and then papaya extract, and then he rinses, and I know it's a lot of hard work, but hell, if I had hair like that, I'd love it to death too, and--"   
"Morgan!" Jennifer broke into the tiny bassist's rant. "Yes, I know Jericho has gorgeous hair and all that! Now, what happened between Rikki and Amber?" Morgan looked a bit confused, the way she always did when someone brought her back from one of her Spaz Moment trips, but then shook her head and lit up as she remembered the topic at hand.   
"Oh, yeah! That!" Remembering what she'd been saying earlier, Morgan proceeded to explain. "So, basically, Rikki and Amber claimed that they couldn't work together anymore, and gave Jericho and me an ultimatum between the two of them, and so we did the whole Eeny Meeny Miny Moe thing, and it turned out that we had to kick poor Amber out!"   
Jennifer sighed. Well, there went their twelfth lead guitarist down the drain. But that still left the rhythm guitar player.   
"What happened to the other guitar player?" she wanted to know. Now Morgan looked as confused as Jericho.   
"Huh?" she wanted to know. "You mean there was another one?"   
Jennifer decided that if she sighed any more times, she'd end up sounding like a deflating balloon.   
"Never mind; it looks like we're going to have to find two guitarists--again," she muttered. Rikki finally stopped loving himself--at least for a few seconds--long enough to glance up and point out, "Well then, you'd better do it fast--the gig at Valentino's is tonight, and I don't think all those record label execs are going to be too impressed if we show up lacking a guitar player."   
"Right, right," Jennifer grumbled, before picking her way amongst all the empty beer cans and dirty clothing to a tattered old desk and scrounging around the drawers. She promptly emerged with a poster, advertising for two positions available to play lead and rhythm guitar and sing backup vocals in a highly successful hard rock band.   
"I'll go over to the Xerox place across the street to make some copies, and you hang them up all over town. Hopefully by tonight, we'll have found our two guitarists," she muttered darkly. 

* * *

Lance and Pietro wandered around downtown, following the address that Lance had scribbled down on the palm of his hand. Pietro sneezed irritably, before grumbling, "So tell me again, oh Earthquake God, just why exactly are we applying for jobs as high school janitors?!" Lance sighed in annoyance, before gritting out, "For the last time, Maximoff, it's an easy job that nobody wants, meaning we'll be shoo-ins for the positions!"   
"Right, right," Pietro muttered. Suddenly, a gust of wind blew a stray piece of pink paper forward, smacking the ad flat into his face. "Ow! Oh, no, I think I got a paper cut on my perfect cute nose!" Lance reached over, plucking the paper away from Pietro's face while rolling his eyes, before the bold black lettering on the ad caught his attention and he paused to read the message.   
"Hey! Hold on a minute, Pietro, I think I may be on to something," he murmured, reaching out and grabbing his fellow Brotherhood member by the collar just as the latter was about to walk off in the direction of the janitor job.   
"What?" Pietro muttered grumpily, and Lance thrust the ad into his face. "Hmm...Wanted: Two youths in their late teens or early twenties, to play lead and rhythm guitar in a successful local hard rock band. Very good pay, free beverages at whichever club the band's playing at, possibility of getting signed onto a record label and recording rock albums."   
"Well?" Lance was grinning like a Cheschire cat. "What do you think?"   
Pietro shrugged.   
"It sounds great. But..." He deliberately let his voice trail off.   
"But what?" Lance demanded impatiently.   
"Aren't you forgetting something?" And then, without allowing Lance time to continue, Pietro snapped, "We're not exactly the next Eddie Van Halens, if you catch my drift!"   
Lance scowled, before waving his hands casually back and forth.   
"Doesn't matter; they sound desperate," he muttered, carelessly brushing aside the fact that neither he nor Pietro had ever even _seen_ a guitar, let alone played one, let alone played one _well._ "We'll be shoo-ins for the jobs."   
Pietro still looked unconvinced.   
"Hey, making a fool out of myself isn't exactly on my agenda--" he started to say doubtfully, when Lance uttered those magic words.   
"Think of it as a challenge," he said casually, and a light seemed to go off in Pietro's head.   
"Hey, what are we waiting for?" he chirped. "Let's go audition!" 

* * *

*And...Stop! Okay, the first chapter's finished. In the next chapter, Lance and Pietro will actually get to meet the band and learn how to pick up a guitar and all that lovely stuff. Now go review the first chapter. Please? Did you love it? Hate it? Oh, and the people whose characters I've used, did you like the way your characters were portrayed, or would you prefer I tweak around with their personalities? Drop me a line, will ya? 


	3. Chapter Two: Guitar Gods In The Making

**Chapter Two: Guitar Gods In The Making**

* * *

"Do you think you can memorize a ten-song setlist by tonight?"   
"Um...no?"   
"Well then, do you think you can come up with a bridge for the song--"   
"Um, excuse me? Yeah, uh...what's a bridge?"   
"Never mind. Here, do you at least know how to solo?"   
"Uh..."   
"Sure, of course we can! Don't listen to him, all that bleach's gotten into his brains!"   
"Hey! I'll have you know, us Maximoffs do _not_ dye our hair! My hair's naturally platinum, as was my (rotten jackass) father's before me, as was his father's before him!"   
Jennifer sighed, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she and the band, sans its two guitarists, interviewed the last candidates to have shown up for a last-minute audition. She had just spent the better part of nearly half an hour interrogating two clueless youths who flat out didn't know what A-minor was, had no idea how to play a solo, and barely even knew how to pick up a guitar. The band itself didn't seem to care; Rikki was striking rock star poses in front of the full-length mirror and hollering, "I'm the King of the World!", Morgan was busy rolling her tongue and giggling at the way her tongue ring would shift around, and Jericho was too engrossed in admiring his perfect tan to realize that two potential guitar players had actually showed up. Jennifer herself had been the one conducting the whole interview, and had soon realized that not only did these two guys possess no six-string prowess whatsoever, they flat out didn't even know how to play a triangle, let alone a guitar! _Oh, well, _she thought to herself, _at least they _look_ the part of rock & roll guitarists!_ Sure the silver-haired one was a bit on the skinny side, but then again, plenty of noted guitar icons were skinny as a stick, so that shouldn't prove to be a problem.   
"Well, I have to say I appreciate your honesty about the fact that both of you are..." Jennifer's voice trailed off, as she tried to think of a suitable, polite way to put her thoughts into words. _Completely six-string ignorant? Idiots who've probably never even seen a guitar? Flat out suck? Totally unsuitable for the job? _No, that was a bit too harsh.   
"...That you aren't quite as acquainted with the guitar as one might expect," Jennifer finally mumbled delicately.   
"Oh." The silver-haired one--Pietro Something-Or-Other--looked absolutely crushed, and Jennifer immediately felt sorry for him. _No!_ Her sense of logic screamed. _It was feeling sorry for pathetic struggling musicians that got you into this Hell in the first place!_

"Hey, hold on a second," Jericho suddenly spoke up, then scrutinized Jennifer with puzzled eyes. "Um...what's your name again? Judy...Jodie..Julie! That's it!"   
"Gee, I thought I was Giselle," Jennifer muttered sarcastically under her breath, but Jericho was too caught up in whichever brilliant idea he'd suddenly come up with--at least brilliant enough to get him to stop brushing his perfect blonde hair--to bother with the poor manager's feelings.   
"Hey, you two over there," Jericho began to say, looking rather proud of himself for having come up with such an ingenious way to audition the two candidates. "Who are your favorite guitar players?"   
Lance and Pietro thought for a few seconds, before Lance uttered the first name.   
"Slash," he replied simply, and it wasn't long before Pietro quickly added, "Oh, I'd have to say Eddie Van Halen..."   
"...And Jimmy Page..."   
"...And Angus Young..."   
Jericho snapped his fingers before the duo could continue rattling off a list of guitar icons.   
"Well then, there you go," he chirped brightly. "It's obvious that you two are perfect for the band."   
Jennifer nearly fell off her stool when she heard those words. Turning around to face Jericho with a bewildered look on her face, she gasped out incredulously, "They are?" Jericho shrugged, as if it were obvious.   
"Well...yeah!" he answered. Jennifer quickly got off her seat, and pulled the drummer into a corner where they wouldn't likely be overheard by the two guitar hopefuls.   
"Aren't you forgetting something, Mr. I'm-The-Next-Diamond-Dave?" she hissed through clenched teeth. Jericho stared back stupidly at her.   
"Not really." He shrugged. Jennifer felt like tearing her hair out in frustration.   
"Those two boys know _nothing_ about a guitar," she pointed out in a clipped tone. "They don't know how to solo, they don't know what a bridge is, and I seriously doubt that they've even _seen_ a guitar, let alone played one!"   
"Well...maybe," Jericho agreed reluctantly. He then brightened up, as he added, "But hey, they've got all the right influences: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Angus Young...How can you go wrong with a group like that?"   
Jennifer sighed.   
"There are plenty of bands out there today that cite Led Zeppelin and AC/DC as their main influences...and they're still crap," she pointed out. Jericho responded with another one of his adorably clueless looks.   
"Perhaps," he gave in. "But they're still influenced by all the right people. Plus, you've got to admit they're a way better choice than our only other options--that weird girly German boy and his skateboarding pal."   
Jennifer brushed back a strand of hair.   
"Well...you've got a point there, they _are_ better than those two," she admitted. Jericho nodded wisely.   
"Yeah; I mean, the skateboarder wore a boxers wedgie for one reason or another, and wouldn't stop flapping his gums about skateboarding," he grumbled. His perfect nose scrunched up, as he added, "Plus, that German boy kept on trying to hit on me for one reason or another."   
At that point, Rikki chose to make his presence felt, as he turned around, beer can in hand, and called out belligerently, "Maybe it was because he thought you were a friggin' chick?" Jericho looked horrified.   
"No way!" he gasped, at the same time that Morgan pouted, "Hey! That was hella mean!" Jennifer impatiently brushed a stray piece of hair away from her eyes, as she tried to steer the topic back to the subject at hand.   
"So, are we hiring these two or not?" she tried to say, but Morgan shot up before anyone could reply, whining in a high-pitched voice directed toward Rikki, "You should apologize, Rikki Stixx! That was really mean what you said to Jerky; I mean, sure he has the prettiest hair out of all of us, but that doesn't mean that guys can't look sexy if they have long hair; in fact, plenty of rock stairs who leaned a bit on the feminine side were hella sexy, there was Jim Morrison in the sixties, and then in the seventies we had guys like Robert Plant, and in the eighties there were Jon Bon Jovi, and Bret Michaels, and David Lee Roth, and, oh yeah, Axl Rose, and Vince Neil, and..."   
"Eh, whatever," Rikki muttered, as Morgan babbled on, while Jericho pouted and whined, "Hey, quit calling me Jerky, you know I hate that name!" 

Pietro peeked over at Lance out of the corner of his eyes, waiting patiently while the band seemed to fight within itself over what appeared to be the who was the sexiest front man of rock & roll, while their manager looked helplessly on. Pietro shook his head, darting a second envious glance at his dark-haired companion. How could Lance wait so patiently, chewing on a piece of grass, while their potential future colleagues argued on and on over trivial subjects? Pietro himself couldn't stand to sit still, and would occasionally sprint all over the room, moving too fast for the normal humans to notice that he would be fidgeting next to Lance one second, and gone the next, before reappearing again in the blink of an eye. Not that the band itself would have noticed; hell, for all they cared, Lance could have dropped the whole ceiling on them, and they'd still be too distracted over whether their drummer could boast the most gorgeous hair out of all three of them and still be all man to notice. Pietro frowned. Except for that Jennifer chick. She would occasionally dart quick, suspicious looks in his direction whenever a rush of wind would continually breeze around the room. Pietro turned to Lance, and whined, "I wanna go home! That little munchkin's beginning to scare me, and I think their manager might be on to us being mutants and all!" Lance turned around impatiently, spitting out the blade of grass in his mouth, before gritting out, "Stuff it, Maximoff. I told you already; we're shoo-ins for this job, so don't blow it."   
"But we don't even know how to play the guitar!" Pietro pointed out acidly. Pouting, he added, "And why did you tell me to say that my favorite guitarists were Eddie Van Halen and Angus Young? I thought everyone knew that I like C.C. DeVille the best!" Lance quickly clamped a hand over Pietro's mouth, frantically looking about to see if the rest of the band had overheard. When the trio continued to argue and generally gave no indication that they'd heard, Lance removed his hand and hissed, "Because we have to make them think that we've at least got all the right influences! If they learn that you mimic the loudmouth from Poison, _and_ can't play anything worth shit, there's _no way_ they're gonna hire us!"   
Pietro pouted.   
"Fine," he sulked. "Question, though?"   
"Hmm?" Lance sounded distracted, as he watched the band come to an agreement with their manager.   
"Who's Angus Young?" Pietro asked innocently, blinking wide blue eyes.   
"D'oah!" Lance smacked his forehead in frustration, and the beer-soaked wooden chair he was sitting on was just slippery enough to dump him unceremoniously onto his butt. 

Jennifer glanced down at her notepad, upon which she'd been half-heartedly taking some notes on the potential guitarists interviewed, and reluctantly reached a decision with the band, still arguing over Jericho's gorgeous blonde hair. Between these two screwballs--who'd at least cited credible influences--and the other two screwballs--one of whom wouldn't shut up about skateboarding, the other who thought their drummer was a chick and kept on trying to pick "her" up--it looked as though the first duo was a better choice. Glancing at her slim silver watch, she noted worriedly that the band couldn't afford to be too picky, anyway: their gig at Valentino's started in roughly six hours, and the band was expected to show up at least one hour early to set up and rehearse. Which left roughly five hours for their newest lead and rhythm guitarists--Lance Alvers and Pietro Maximoff--to learn how to play the guitar, perfect the instrument at least well enough to churn out some half-assed solos, and learn at the absolute minimum ten of the thirty original songs that the band had written over the years, plus a scattering of covers of such recognizable songs as AC/DC's "Back in Black" and Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages". Jennifer stood up, and walked over to their newest guitar players, leaving the rest of the band arguing over what had degenerated into who had the coolest hair in hair metal. Right now they were torn between the guy from Ratt and the guy from Warrant, with Rikki siding with Ratt since he also had black hair, Jericho going with Warrant since their front man was a blonde, and Morgan undecided between the two because...well, because she was Morgan. Lance and Pietro, meanwhile, who'd also begun arguing over one thing or another before Pietro had said something stupid and caused the hapless Lance to fall out of his chair, leapt up immediately when they saw Jennifer approach. Plastering identical huge grins on their faces, the two chirped in unison, "So, do we get the job?" Jennifer had to admit that, despite the fact that they had never even touched a guitar, they _did_ look awfully adorable with those identical hopeful expressions on their faces. Cracking a genuine smile, she said warmly, "Yes. Welcome to the jungle...I mean, to the band! Ugh, one of these days, I'm _so_ gonna confiscate Morgan's GN'R records!" 

Morgan wrenched herself out of the band argument, which had somehow been steered from the best hair in heavy metal to what kind of conditioner David Lee Roth must have used in the eighties, long enough to call out with her usual chirpiness, "Hey, Jenny, if those guys can get out their guitars right now, I think I might be able to teach them some of the most basic stuff. I mean, yeah, I know a bass is different from a guitar and all, but...well, with only five hours to learn how to play and then memorize fifteen songs, I don't think any of us can afford to be too picky!"   
"Uh oh." Lance and Pietro stopped celebrating, and instead began to look nervous, as Jennifer shot them a puzzled look, before prodding, "Um...you _do_ at least _own_ guitars, don't you?"   
"No--" Pietro said, before Lance could stop him. By the time he'd clamped his hand over the silver-haired youth's mouth, it was too late, and Rikki had already exploded snidely, "Don't tell me--you audition for a hard rock band not only clueless about how to play the instruments your positions are supposed to fill, but also flat out not owning said instruments!"   
"Hey...big sentence," Morgan chipped in brightly, to which Rikki whirled around and shot her a nasty look.   
"But we can get guitars real easy," Lance stammered nervously. Pietro turned to look at him with a confused expression on his face.   
"We can?" he asked dumbly. Lance glared at him out of the corners of his eyes.   
"Yes, we can," he gritted out through clenched teeth, while forcing a tight-lipped phony smile on his face. "Don't worry; we'll be back in half an hour with our guitars." And he turned around and headed out of the pigsty that the band called their humble abode, dragging Pietro with him. 

* * *

Pietro trotted to keep up with Lance's determined pace, while making sure not to actually break out into a run and pass Lance by a mile--literally. Tapping his fellow Brotherhood member on the shoulder, the silver-haired speed demon pointed out sensibly, "Uh, question? How are going to buy guitars if we're beyond broke, and the only reason we took up this band gig was to earn some money in the first place?" Lance turned around with a sly grin on his face.   
"Simple," came his reply. "We'll steal 'em."   
Pietro shrugged.   
"Okay," he agreed pleasantly, seeing absolutely nothing wrong with the notion. The two arrived in front of a brightly-lit shop cleverly titled Six String Center, and Pietro rolled up his shirtsleeves, eager to get to work and show off at the same time.   
"Watch and weep," he bragged, and zipped into the music store at a speed that would make any normal person's head spin. 

Joe Schmoe glanced up from his Big Uns magazine when he thought he felt a light breeze go through the store. Quickly slapping a twelve-week-old newspaper over his, ahem, more...adult-oriented 'zine, the redheaded, pimple-faced clerk sitting behind the service counter of Six String Center carelessly leaned over and glanced around the store. Nothing. Shrugging, Joe Schmoe returned to his magazine.   
"Oof!"   
Joe's eyebrows raised a notch when he thought he heard someone grunt out. Leaning over the service counter again, he scanned the entire music store for hints of intruders. No one. Another gust of wind lifted up, as Joe resumed to gawking at the Miss Spring Break centerfold, followed by the smacking sound of a body hitting a particularly heavy instrument, and another high-pitched whine of, "Oof! Hey, ow!" Now a bit unnerved, Joe slammed down his copy of Big Uns, before getting out from behind the counter and calling out into the empty music store, "Dude, is anybody out there?" Silence. The only response that greeted his question was another gust of wind, which was soon followed by another heavy smack and another whine of, "Uck, too heavy!" Joe's eyebrows nearly flew off his forehead. He could have sworn he just saw some white-haired kid attempting to pick up one type of instrument or another, but the apparition was soon gone in a gust of wind. Blinking, Joe decided that there must be something wrong with the employees' coffee, and returned to his seat behind the service counter, eagerly resuming his browsing of the Big Uns magazine. 

Lance waited impatiently for Pietro to return with the promised guitars, but after a few zips around the music store and several complaints of, "Oof! Too heavy!", the silver-haired speed demon returned forlornly, highly unsuccessful in his mission.   
"The guitars were too heavy," Pietro complained, rubbing his sore shoulders. Lance arched an eyebrow. He knew that at the rate his buddy burned up energy, it didn't leave him with as much physical strength as, say, himself or Summers, but he'd never have guessed that Pietro would be so weak and shrimpy as to be unable to pick up even a guitar. Dude, even that hyperactive purple-haired munchkin of a bass player--Morgan What's-Her-Name--could lift and shoulder on her heavy bass guitar with little problem! Lance glanced into the interiors of Six String Center, wondering what kind of monster guitars they carried...and then noticed the twin cellos that had been lodged out of place. Smacking his forehead in frustration, the Brotherhood leader groaned, "Maximoff, you idiot! Those were friggin' _cellos_ you were trying to steal! _Of course_ they'd be too heavy to be lifted over a course of half a second!" Pietro's face squinched up to resemble that of someone who'd just bitten into a giant lemon.   
"What?!" he lamented. "You mean I nearly broke my back trying to pick up a bunch of _cellos?"_   
"How could you be so stupid!" Lance exploded. "I mean, I may not be a guitar god or anything like that, but even _I_ can tell the difference between a cello and a guitar!"   
"Hey, try running at a high speed and picking up the first two guitars you see," Pietro muttered defensively. "It's not as easy as it seems, and sometimes, you tend to confuse things!"   
Lance sighed, before reaching down and picking up the two empty guitar cases he'd brought along.   
"Here: watch and learn from the master," he ordered. Pietro eagerly opened the two cases, then frowned when he found them empty.   
"Hey," he murmured, "there's nothing in here."   
"I know," Lance replied. "That's the whole point. I saw this on TV one night--back when we still had electricity--and VH1 was running some special on Mötley Crüe. This is supposedly how Nikki Sixx got his first guitar."   
Pietro frowned.   
"But I thought Nikki was the bass player," he pointed out. Lance shrugged.   
"I don't know; I could never tell them apart," he muttered. "All I knew is that front man Vince Neil was the blonde guy; the other three just sort of blended in to one big mousse-covered dark-haired scary white faces background."   
Pietro shrugged.   
"Fine then, let's see how the _master_ operates," he muttered grumpily, as Lance picked up his two empty guitar cases and confidently strolled into the music store. 

Joe Schmoe glanced up from his Big Uns magazine when he saw a customer enter the store. Quickly sliding the 'zine underneath a pile of week-old newspapers, he hurriedly wiped away the drool from his chin and straightened out his uniform, plastering a great big phony smile on his face as he greeted, "Yes? Can I help you?" Lance casually placed his two empty guitar cases down by his feet, as he lied convincingly, "Hi, I'm looking for a job, and I thought I saw a 'For Hire' sign by the window. Do you think I could get an application?"   
Joe shrugged.   
"Sure. Just let me go into the back and get you the papers, 'kay?" he mumbled, and got off his stool and scurried into the back room.   
"Take your time; I'm in no particular hurry," Lance called out after him, as he casually walked over to the nearest display of brand-new electric guitars. Glancing around quickly and seeing only Pietro outside, Lance began searching the ceiling for any security cameras.   
"Okay, so are you looking for a regular job, or is it just temporary?" Joe called out from the back.   
"Huh?" Lance was confused for a second, busy gloating over the fact that no cameras were in sight, before remembering what he'd just said and fibbing, "Oh, uh, I guess I'm looking for a temporary one." Ignoring the gawky, pimple-faced clerk's reply, Lance reached over, took the first two non-cellos from their display racks, casually placed them into his empty guitar cases, and waited. A few minutes later, Joe Schmoe returned from the back, application papers in hand.   
"So, do you want to fill them out here, or--" he began to say. Lance graciously took the papers, and said, "Thank you, I think I'll fill them out at home." And he grabbed his two guitar cases and strutted out of the room, calling out a friendly good-bye and adding under his breath, "Sucker." 

Pietro was waiting for him outside the guitar shop, hopping up and down and squealing excitedly, "Well? Did you get them? Did you? Didyoudidyoudidyoudidyoudidyou?" Lance rolled his eyes, and handed over one of the guitar cases to his friend.   
"Course I did," he bragged. "Didn't you see the whole ordeal from the window?"   
Pietro grinned.   
"Well, then, what are we waiting for? Let's go show these babies off to our band!" he chirped brightly. 

* * *

Jennifer opened the two guitar cases, examined the long-necked instruments snugly nestled inside, and burst out laughing. Lance and Pietro exchanged confused looks, as Morgan peeked over from behind Jennifer and also began to giggle.   
"What? What's so funny?" Lance wanted to know, and Pietro echoed his questions. Jennifer wiped away a few tears of laughter, and managed to gasp out between giggles, "These...these are basses!" Lance looked crushed, and Pietro broke off into a huge, gleeful smirk, as he punched his buddy in the arm and gloated, "Look who's talking now!" Lance turned around, and gritted out, "Well, at least _I_ didn't try to get us two cellos!" Pietro blushed. Jennifer, meanwhile, had regained her composure, and spoke up pleasantly, "Don't worry, Morgan managed to find you two some guitars. Apparently, our last two guitar players left in such a hurry that they didn't bother to take their instruments with them." Lance and Pietro looked up hopefully.   
"You mean...we're still in the band?" Pietro asked in a tiny voice. Jennifer smiled.   
"Of course you are," she replied in a gentle voice. Morgan piped up, "Hey, why would we kick you out...especially when you just scored me two free basses?"   
"Now you better go with Morgan so she can teach you the basic stuff," Jennifer spoke up. Glancing at her watch, she added more seriously, "We've got roughly four hours until the gig at Valentino's tonight, and this show could make or break us." 

* * *

*And here's the end to Chapter Two! Next up, we get to read about Lance and Pietro actually performing live! Cya then! ^_^ 

*Oh, and by the way, VivaGlam, I've decided to add Roxy as the producer/publicity agent. Look for her to make an impact in the next chapter, 'kay? 


	4. Chapter Three: We Will, We Will, Rock Yo...

*Hey, VivaGlam, I did some searching for you, and it turns out _Love Potion # 9 _was written by someone called Bisouretro. 'Twasn't me; I'll admit to not finishing all my stories, but I swear that I've completed each and every single one that I've submitted to the Evo section. The only one that sounds like _Love Potion_ would be _They Love Us, They Love Us Not, _which I'll admit to having abandoned for two months due to writer's block, before going back to it and finishing it a few days before coming up with the idea for _Money Talks._ ^_^ 

* * *

**Chapter Three: We Will, We Will, Rock You (Hopefully!)**

* * *

"Oof! Oof! Oi! Too tight!" Lance panted, wearing only a three-sizes-too-small-for-him black T-shirt and struggling to step into his skintight pair of black leather pants, adorned with a scattering of silver chains and spikes around the lace-up crotch area. Just then, Rikki passed by the hopping Lance, spraying God only knew what into his already mousse-augmented hair and looking perfectly comfortable in his own pair of equally tight (if not even tighter!) leather pants. The belligerent lead singer, looking every bit the part of heavy metal front man in his black leather and hairspray, stopped in front of a cracked, dusty mirror and began applying kohls of midnight-black mascara around his eyes to make his scarlet-tinted contacts stand out even further. Morgan, meanwhile, stepped out from behind the screen that had been set up for her in the changing room, all glammed out in a shiny plastic purple jacket over a homemade black fishnet top and a red leather miniskirt. She stumbled and nearly tripped in her clunky black thigh-high boots, but otherwise seemed perfectly comfortable in her hideous heavy metal stage costume. Just as Lance finally succeeded in squeezing into his leather pants, Jericho and Pietro emerged simultaneously from the bathrooms, the former decked out in only a pair of glossy plastic turquoise pants and nothing else, the latter crammed into a sleeveless white T-shirt and a pair of faded and shredded jeans that looked like they'd run into a pair of highly unfriendly scissors. Jericho got to the only other mirror in the room first, and began brushing his already perfect hair. Unfortunately for him, Pietro had by then decided that, as rhythm guitarist (and soon to be lead guitarist, as soon as Lance screwed up and got demoted), it was his job to look as perfect as he could be and thusly outshine his partner in crime. Pietro promptly arrived in front of the mirror as well, elbowed Jericho out of the way, and began brushing his own perfect hair. Jericho glared at his snotty, silver-haired band mate, before using his strength advantage to return Pietro's favor with extra force, and resuming brushing his golden locks. Pietro scowled, before sticking his tongue out at the taller blonde and worming his way back in front of the mirror to tend his perfect hair. Jericho grew annoyed, as he grumbled, "Hey, shove off; it's my turf!" Pietro didn't bother to even look at the drummer as he sang out in that maddening tone of his, "Don't you know how to share?" The irate Jericho responded by drawing himself to his full height of six foot five, and snapping, "No, I guess not!" 

"Come on, you two prima donnas, learn to play nice!" Lance called out from his corner, gingerly testing out his skintight leather pants and ending up walking as though he'd been riding a horse all day. A skittish, angry horse. Who jumped and bounced. A lot. Morgan, meanwhile, gloated from her tiny little area of the dressing room, "Ha! That's what you two get for having such pretty hair!" Her tiny nose squinched up, as she then proceeded to grumble, "Although, it's still not fair that you two get such gorgeous hair; I mean, I'm a girl, and girls are supposed to generally have prettier hair than boys, and you know who has really pretty hair? Oh, no wait, I forgot! Oh, well. But seriously, you know who had really ugly hair? Wait...I forgot that, too. Oh, oh, I know! _Jennifer_ has really pretty hair!" Jericho and Pietro, apparently having settled out their differences on their own, turned around to gawk at the rambling Morgan, before a clueless Jericho broke into the purple-haired bassist's rants to inquire, "Who's Jennifer? Is that one of our ex-band mates who quit the band?" Morgan shot him a weird look, as she reminded him, "No, you silly Jerky! Jennifer's our manager, remember?" Jericho frowned, biting down on his lower lip.   
"Oh, gee, I thought her name was Janelle," he mumbled. Darting an annoyed look in Morgan's direction, he added, "And quit calling me Jerky, you...you Minnie Mouse!" Morgan pouted.   
"Hey! That's mean!" she whined. 

Fortunately for the band, Jennifer peeked her head into the dressing room before Morgan could go off on another one of her rambling spaz trips, calling out sweetly, "Hey, is it safe to come in now?"   
"Yeah, we're all done!" Lance replied, shouldering on his electric guitar and gingerly testing out the strings, which, at Morgan's suggestion, had been soaked in honey before show time. Jennifer entered the room, and a pleased look swept across her features as she noticed that the entire band was sober, dressed, and ready to go as soon as the second opening act finished their hour-long set.   
"Great, looks like we're all set to go," she chirped brightly, surveying the band members. Rikki, fully glammed out, was standing in front of his mirror, pumping his fist into the air and hollering, "I am a rock star!" while a shirtless Jericho sat on his drum stool and chatted casually with Morgan, who was distractedly testing out her bass. Their newest guitar players, Lance and Pietro, nervously paced back and forth, wearing their guitars too low and fiddling around with the strings, looking somewhat nervous about having to perform and appearing totally uncomfortable in their heavy metal gear. Jennifer shrugged. That was only natural--both the nervousness at having to play lead and rhythm guitar after only three and a half hours of lessons, as well as the discomfort at having to stumble around onstage in skintight leather pants and strategically shredded jeans. Clearing her throat and whistling to get the distracted band's attention, Jennifer called out some basic instructions, starting off with a basic pep talk before delving into an explanation of how the performance at Valentino's was supposed to go.   
"All right, the second opening act's just about done now, and after a five-minute intermission, you guys will be on," she began. Just then, Pietro spoke up.   
"Um, question?" At Jennifer's nod, the platinum-haired rhythm guitarist demanded, "How the hell are we supposed to know when to go on?"   
"That would be when the owner of the club announces the band's name," Jennifer spoke condescendingly, and Pietro retorted irritably, "What the hell _is_ the band's name, anyway?" Jennifer blinked in surprise.   
"You mean nobody has told you yet?" She turned accusing blue eyes to the original three members of the band. Rikki ignored her and continued striking poses in front of the mirror and shouting out, "I am a rock star!", Jericho stared stupidly back at her with wide, innocent eyes, and Morgan eeped and lowered her gaze to the floor, fiddling around and pretending to be fascinated by the torn linoleum tiles. Jennifer placed her hands on her hips, as she began admonishingly, "Morgan..."   
"I forgot!" Morgan wailed. Jennifer shrugged, and decided that she could afford to let that particular mistake go.   
"Okay, the band's name is Ömega," she began, to which Lance burst out laughing as he mocked, "Ömega? That sounds like a frickin' sports car!" Pietro joined in, snickering, "Yeah, I can just see it now: the 2002 Ford Ömega, goes from zero to sixty in five seconds! No interest fee, zero down payment, fifteen hundred dollar cash back--"   
"Okay, okay!" Jennifer snapped irritably. "So it's not exactly as cool as Metallica or Guns N' Roses! You're not exactly at liberty to complain, ya know!"   
"So, what exactly are band members called? Surely not something as cool as Gunners," Lance scorned.   
"Listen, the two of you better stuff it, or else I'll sic Motor Mouth Morgan on you!" Jennifer threatened. Lance and Pietro's eyes widened impossibly, as both guitarists shrieked, "NO!" Morgan, meanwhile, turned away from her conversation with Jericho, long enough to inquire sweetly, "Did you say something about me?" Jennifer shot a gleeful smirk at the two cowering guitar players, before turning to Morgan and whistling innocently, "Oh, nothing, it's just that a little birdie told me that Lance and Pietro think Ömega is a stupid name for a band." Morgan's chin jutted way out, as she opened her mouth to the horror of Lance and Pietro, before shrieking, "Hey, you take that back you mean...boys! That is so incredibly not nice, and totally rude, and besides, I'd like to see you two come up with a better name! I mean, when this band originally formed two years ago, we were a cover band, so we called it B.E.E., after W.A.S.P., ya know? And then, when we started writing our own songs, did ya know that we were gonna change our band name from B.E.E. to Anthrax? Did ya did ya did ya? Well, so then anyway, our original lead singer, Trina Joyce, pointed out that the name Anthrax was already taken! Grr, I hate smart people, so then Jericho came up with the name Ömega, and then when Trina left the band because she and Jericho used to go out, before they broke up "on account of his airheadedness" and so when Trina left, we thought about changing the band name to Anthrax, since she was no longer around to point out that we'd ripped off some funny-looking bald guy with a bigass goatee, and--" 

Just then, the club owner's booming voice announced that the headliners that night would be Ömega, thankfully sparing not just Lance and Pietro, but by then a murderously pissed off Rikki Stixx as well from a spazzed-out Morgan and her mighty mouth. Rikki tossed back his headful of steel-black locks, growled out, "Well, we're on!" and stormed out of the dressing room and toward the stage, with the rest of the band following at his heels. Ömega took the stage, as the fans cheered wildly (and, in many cases, drunkenly as well), with Rikki immediately going up to the microphone and commanding all of the attention. Jennifer, meanwhile, peeked out from behind the stage, noting nervously the several record label execs and noted producers in the front row. Mentally going over the setlist that night, she remembered with immense relief that out of the fifteen songs chosen, the ten originals were relatively clean with very little swearing or sexual references, whereas the five covers, including Van Halen's "Panama" that was slated to kick off the show, were also fairly non-explicit. Just in case though, knowing how Rikki liked to improvise...Jennifer decided that she had a highly unpleasant and grueling task ahead of her, mentally going over all the lyrics to Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle", Def Leppard's "Photograph", Mötley Crüe's version of "Smokin' in the Boys' Room", and AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" to see if there were any blatant opportunities for Rikki to insert the occasional sexual innuendo or explicit curse words. 

Meanwhile, as Jennifer fretted and frantically ran through song lyrics, Ömega itself had already kicked off the set with a cover of "Panama", delving into the familiar intro and with Lance and Pietro playing surprisingly well. Rikki, looking every bit the rock star that he'd claimed to be back in the dressing room, took the microphone off its mic stand so that he could move freely about the stage without a long metal pole trailing behind him, and began to sing. 

"Jump back, what's that sound?   
Here she comes, full blast and top down   
Hot shoe, burnin' down the avenue   
Model citizen, zero discipline!" 

Jennifer nodded along to the lyrics. So far, so good. Rikki had yet to add one of his infamously for the worse ad-libs. Lance and Pietro, meanwhile, were handling guitar duties rather effortlessly, especially considering the complexity of Eddie Van Halen's playing. The tall, slim manager absently brushed a strand of honey-colored hair away from her face, beginning to relax and enjoy the show as the three guitarists joined Rikki's trademark abrasive vocals, offering a starkly contrasting alternative to the voice of Diamond Dave that old school Van Halen fans were used to. 

"Don't you know she's coming home with me?   
You'll lose her in the turn   
I'll get her!" 

The quartet sang together, their vocals soaring above the playful guitar riffs. And then, as the song's self-titled chorus began, disaster struck, much to Jennifer's dismay. Morgan, ever the hyperactive one, gleefully screeched out her part in a high-pitched squeal that would have outshone Rikki's own keening, abrasive voice, had it not been lacking so much harmony. Meanwhile, Lance, in his desperate effort to maintain his masculinity amidst all the glammed out stage costumes and eye makeup, belted out the chorus of "Panama" in as low a voice as he possibly could, and ended up croaking out the lyrics. And Pietro outright mixed up the chorus altogether, happily trilling a chorus of, "Animal!" Suddenly, as Pietro happily sang out his own made up chorus of, "Animal!" while the rest of the band was shrieking, "Panama!" one of the groupie wannabes tossed up her bra onstage to join the numerous items of lingerie already cluttering the stage. Unfortunately for the band, though, this time, the lavender satin bra smacked a startled Pietro squarely in the face, something he wasn't used to, especially when concentrating on picking his way through his newly acquired rhythm guitar.   
"Oh, my God! I'm blind!"   
Rikki, fortunately, blinked dazedly for only a second amidst the messed-up chorus and Pietro's comical flailings as he wailed about and ran around the stage with his rhythm guitar bouncing against his crotch and a violet brassiere tangled on his face. Rikki, ever the efficient front man, quickly brushed off the chaos surrounding the stage and his rhythm guitarist, before resuming his duties as the lead singer, effectively drowning out the backup vocals and allowing the guitar players to resume their duties. 

"Ain't nothin' like it, her shiny machine.   
Got the feel for the wheel, keep the moving parts clean   
Hot shoe, burnin' down the avenue   
Got an on-ramp comin' through my bedroom 

Don't you know she's coming home with me?   
You'll lose her in the turn   
I'll get her!" 

The song delved into its chorus once again, the backup vocalists churned out their screwed up version of the extremely simple chorus of, "Panama!" before Lance, proudly basking in the glow as the lead guitarist, slid into the guitar solo of "Panama", struggling to do at least _some_ justice to Eddie Van Halen's original version with his pathetic beginner skills. Rikki impatiently cut back into the vocals at his cue, beginning the spoken part of the song.   
"Yeah, we're runnin' a little bit hot tonight," he murmured seductively into the microphone. "I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off of it/Ah, you reach down, between my legs..." Rikki blinked suddenly, as realization dawned upon him that he'd flat out forgotten the next sentence. Ömega's three guitarists played own, stretching the notes for as long as they possibly could, while Rikki stood planted behind the mic stand, staring cluelessly into the crowds as he struggled to remember his lines. Meanwhile, from behind the stage, Jennifer gazed in dismay at the suddenly unimpressed record company bigshots, pursing their lips thinly as they alternated between glaring in disdain at the band onstage, playing aimlessly on while their crassly belligerent front man struggled to remember the lyrics, and glaring in disdain at the drunken headbangers and skimpily-clad groupies going wild around them, trying with growing success to storm the stage. Jennifer sighed, and rubbed her throbbing temples. It seemed as if Ömega seemed determined to screw up their one last chance at getting signed. 

* * *

Rikki stormed into the dressing room, angrily throwing away the towel he'd used to wipe off both his mascara and his sweat, as he growled in a biting tone, his words aimed at Pietro, "It was the simplest chorus in the history of arena rock! Panama! How can you possibly screw that up?" Pietro blinked cluelessly up at the furious lead singer, before tee heeing nervously under Rikki's murderous glare and quickly apologizing, "Eh heh. Sorry?" Jericho glanced up from his own corner, calling out lazily, "Oh, lay off the kid, Rixx! It's his first show!" Morgan joined Jericho by chirping brightly, "Yeah, Rikki, don't be such a big meanie! Besides, weren't you the one who forgot the lyrics to "Panama"?" A furious Rikki turned around, his bad temper diverted toward the tiny Morgan, as he launched into a scathing verbal assault.   
"Hey, I've been fronting this rock & roll band for damn longer than all your other lead singers combined!" he snapped acidly. "I think I've earned my right to screw up every now and then!"   
"Oh, come on, Rikki, everyone gets to mess up the chorus every now and then," Morgan pouted. Rikki scowled.   
"The whole frickin' song was called "Panama"!" he sulked. "How could someone _possibly_ think that a song titled "Panama" would have a chorus of "Animal"?!"   
Morgan shrugged.   
"Well, plenty of songs have choruses that have nothing to do with the song title," she pointed out reasonably. Snapping her fingers as she remembered something, the tiny bassist chirped, "Like Pearl Jam's "Evenflow"!"   
Rikki shot her an incredulous look.   
"The word "Evenflow" _is_ in the song, ya waste of brain cells!" he exploded. Morgan shrugged, brushing her mistake aside.   
"Eh, who can tell what Eddie Vedder's singing? He mumbles a lot," she whined sulkily, while Rikki glared at her.   
"Aw, chill out, both of you," Jericho groaned. He then tipped his head over to Jennifer as he added, "C'mon, Rixx, even that...that...manager chick, whatever her name is, seems to be cool with the whole "Panama" thing!" Jennifer, meanwhile, was mumbling to herself, "I will _not_ kick his ass, I will _not_ kick his ass, I will _not_ kick his ass..." Whether she was referring to Pietro, who'd managed to convert a chorus of "Panama!" into "Animal!" and then proceeded to have a heart attack over a bra thrown onto the stage, or whether she was referring to Rikki, who'd forgotten a vital chunk of the lyrics after the part of, "Ah, you reach down between my legs..." and thus turned what had at first been a relatively innocent and fun party song in "Panama" into something far naughtier, one couldn't tell. 

"Ma'am, you can't come in here, unless you've got a...um, well, a special, ahem, "lady friend" pass," the voice of one of Valentino's bouncers broke into the chatter and noise of Ömega's dressing room. Suddenly, the doors slammed wide open, and a slim, stylishly-dressed Japanese young woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties burst into the room.   
"Outta my way, old tall, dark, and stupid!" she snapped rudely, making shooing motions with her hands as if to swat the six foot seven bouncer away like some fly on her window. The band started up in bewilderment at this intruder in their dressing room, and Jericho hurriedly zipped up the fly of his shiny blue plastic pants.   
"Hey, who's this broad?" the handsome blonde drummer remarked, sounding far more amused than he did puzzled, while Rikki glowered and Morgan just stared up at the dark-haired woman with wide blue eyes. Jennifer got up from her seat, her mind taken off the humiliating performance that night, as she started toward the Japanese woman and asked warily, "Can I help you, Miss...?" Her voice trailed off, as the other woman extended her hand and spoke in a very curt, business fashion, "Oyama. Roxanne Oyama, call me Roxy, hon, we should do lunch sometime, what do you think of May, I'm booked for the next three months." She paused to take a breath and flip back her dyed honey-colored hair, before continuing.   
"Anyway, I've come to discuss the possibility of a record contract for your band--is it Ömega something?" She arched her eyebrows questioningly, as Jennifer hastened to correct her, "Just Ömega, Ms. Oyama."   
"Please, call me Roxy, hon," Ms. Oyama--Roxy--requested, then pushed past Jennifer on her way to front man Rikki Stixx. "You the lead singer, kid?" In response, Rikki darted a bored, condescending look in her direction.   
"Who wants to know?" he demanded in a belligerent tone of voice. Roxy, however, was unabashed, as she shot right back, "Well, unless you want to be playing crappy nightclubs for the rest of your singing career, then you'd better spill the details, and you'd better do it right now." Glancing at her watch, she added, "I've only got fifteen minutes with which to make a deal with the band, and unless--"   
"We'll be more than happy to cooperate with you, Miss...um, Roxy," Jennifer cut in quickly, before Rikki could insult Roxy any further and send Ömega's last chance at signing a record deal storming out the dressing room in a huff. Roxy smiled, looking pleased with the way things were going.   
"Good, good," she murmured in satisfaction, then reached into her briefcase and pulled out a stack of documents. "Well, here are the papers for you to sign. Just read through the contract and sign on the dotted line," she instructed, watching as Jennifer carefully went over the documents, before giving the go-ahead for the band to sign. 

"So," Jennifer began, as all five of Ömega's members signed on the dotted line. "Which record company are you representing? Atlantic? Elektra? Warner Bros.?"   
Roxy shook her head, before promptly replying, "It's my own record label, and I'll be working as the band's producer, publicist, and evil dictator...um, I mean, mentor!"   
"Right," Jennifer nodded pleasantly, as Roxy went on.   
"I call it Red Zeppelin Records," she added, sounding quite pleased with herself as she named her cleverly-titled record company. Jennifer nearly did a double take.   
_"Red Zeppelin?"_ she choked out, her voice rising incredulously. Roxy nodded, all business.   
"That's right," she confirmed. "I wanted a company name that record buyers could tell for sure worked with only quality hard rock and metal acts."   
"Well, I've seen and heard weirder things after living with the band for over two years, and am thus in no position to judge," Jennifer muttered. She watched as all five band members finished signing the contract, then handed the papers over to Roxy, who eagerly returned them to her briefcase before latching it shut.   
"So, then," Roxy began. "I'll see you at my studio at eight o' clock next morning. Be prepared to record your first rock album." 

* * *

*Ta da! Chapter Three's done! Next up, Ömega tries to record its first album and shoot its first music video, which will be their so very spectacular cover of Van Halen's "Panama" (or "Animal", according to Pietro!), complete with bungee jumping and everything, before going out for the cliché drunken rock & roll partying! ~_^ 


	5. Chapter Four: Photograph, Panama & Party...

*Okay, I know this here chapter's a bit on the messy side, and I'm sorry. It's still funny. Promise. ^_^ 

* * *

**Chapter Four: Photograph, Panama & Partying**

* * *

"I'm outta luck, outta love   
Gotta photograph, picture of   
Passion killer, you're too much   
You're the only one I wanna touch." 

The four remaining members of Ömega watched Rikki in the isolation booth, laying down the vocals for one of the two covers that would appear on their debut album. Roxy and Jennifer, meanwhile, separated from the band by a wall of soundproof glass, oversaw the production of the album. The guitar, bass, and drum tracks had already been laid down for the cover of Def Leppard's "Photograph", and Rikki was in the process of finishing up the song by adding the vocals to the instrumentals. 

"I see your face every time I dream   
On every page, every magazine   
So wild, so free, so far from me   
You're all I want, my fantasy." 

Roxy abruptly cut him off.   
"All right, let's try that again," she spoke through the intercom. Rikki glanced up, looking startled, before indignance replaced his surprise as he growled, "Let's not! That was a perfect take, there were no vocal imperfections whatsoever, and if you think that there's anything wrong with it, then you're a bigger bi--"   
"Rikki, let's not be too hasty!" Jennifer spoke up, hastily cutting him off before he could send their producer storming off. Roxy, meanwhile, was completely unfazed by Rikki's biting words, and was saying calmly, "Yes, I know the vocals were good, but I'd like to see you go a bit higher." Rikki's eyebrows nearly flew off his forehead.   
"Higher?!" he sputtered indignantly. "I can't go any higher; this is as high as it gets!"   
"Well, it's not good enough," Roxy replied sternly. Rikki glared furiously at her, as he began to get agitated.   
"Listen, I don't what your *bleep*-ing problem is--Hey!" Rikki stopped abruptly, as he glanced around at his surroundings. "Did the PA system just censor me off?"   
"That's right," Roxy told him calmly. "I do not tolerate any explicit swearing, unless it is for the record. Otherwise, the isolation booth will automatically censor out whatever profanity you can think of."   
Rikki glowered at her, bristling, before snapping grouchily, "How much higher do you want me to go? Isn't this already as high as Joe Elliott's vocals on the original _Pyromania_ record?"   
Roxy was nodding.   
"You're right, they _are_ easily just as high," she confirmed. "But they're not good enough. I want you to blow the original "Photograph" right out of the water and outshine the first version by going even higher than Mr. Elliott!" At this point, Jennifer intervened.   
"Um, Roxy? Isn't it a bit unreasonable to ask the band to outperform the eighties' biggest arena rock band on their debut album?" she spoke up, frowning. "Besides, Ömega's trying to pay tribute to Def Leppard with their cover of "Photograph", they're not looking to outshine them."   
"Well, there's nothing wrong with paying tribute to a band _and_ outperform them at the same time." Roxy shrugged at the simplicity of the whole situation, before turning her attention back to Rikki, steaming and glowering in the isolation booth. "Now Rikki, go higher on the vocals. I saw you perform that other night at Valentino's, and you easily went as high if not higher than even Axl Rose. Laying down these vocals should be a snap."   
"Yeah, but there's a difference between recording in the studio and performing in front of a live audience--" Rikki started to protest, then gave up on trying to explain the adrenaline rush that a live crowd brought to the performance, and grumbled, "All right, all right, I'll go higher."   
"Good," Roxy replied, and began playing the version of "Photograph" that the band had already recorded, sans any vocals. Rikki took a deep breath, and began to sing. 

"I see your face every time I dream   
On every page, every magazine   
So wild, so free, so far from me   
You're all I want, my _faaaaaantaaaasyyyyyyy!"_

*Crack* *Crack* *Shatter*   
Jennifer blinked in bewilderment, as the studio itself seemed to collapse under the supersonic attack, the supposedly soundproof glass separating the producer from the band from Rikki in his isolation booth cracking like crystal spiderwebs, before shattering into a million pieces. Roxy, meanwhile, was as calm and professional as ever, as she tapped her chin with her index finger and noted, "Hmm, so he can't go any higher after all." 

* * *

  
**Two Weeks Later...**

Roxy surveyed the set, appearing pleased with the results. The abandoned aircraft hangar had been converted to resemble a giant arena with a minimum of twenty-thousand-seating capacity, and a stage had been placed in the middle, complete with flash pots rigged underneath and the name Ömega painted on the floor of the stage in sleek, metallic writing. The lighting had been designed to create a purple laser light show that would zigzag around the band as they performed live on the darkened stage, and Roxy's assistants had managed to bribe, force, and manipulate a makeshift fake audience to fill out the fake arena and go wild on cue. The entire elaborate setup was designed to make Ömega seem like seasoned rock veterans rather than the screwed up rookies that they really were; Roxy had even gone so far as to hire a bunch of strippers and crammed them into strategically ripped Ömega tank tops to pose as groupies and busty fangirls, and go wild on the front row. As a strong believer in first impressions, Roxy was determined that the band leave a good one on the public with their first music video--even though it was a cover song. If both the public and the big wigs at MTV and VH1 took an immediate liking to the band performing a well-recognized classic, then they would be more likely to accept Ömega's original songs as well. Or so Roxy hoped. 

Just then, the band itself emerged from their makeshift dressing rooms, and surveyed the fake arena and fans. At Roxy's insistence, the members of Ömega were decked out in the same clothes that they had been wearing when performing at Valentino's on the night they were signed, although what she hadn't told them was that the reason for her request was because a lead singer and lead guitarist running around in skintight black leather pants stood a better chance of scoring points with the female fanbase than they would wearing anything else. Roxy walked up to the empty stage to meet the band, calling out instructions at the top of her lungs in an effort to be heard over the chatter and noise of their fake audience.   
"All right, what we're going to do here is pay some tribute to the original "Panama" video yet all the while making the entire video that of a live concert performance. No cruising around in a red sports car, no smoking in front of a grand piano, no sliding down poles, no drummer peeking out from underneath a lady's fishnet-covered leg, and most certainly no front man getting hauled out of a hotel by police wearing only handcuffs and a towel!" she began. "Now, as all of you should know, the most memorable parts of the "Panama" video were when all the band members were swung across the stage on bungee chords."   
Rikki's eyes bugged out, and his red contacts nearly fell off, as he gasped, "Wh...wha...what?! You want me to sky dive across the stage on a frickin' piece of string?!"   
"No," Roxy appeased him. "As the front man, we're going to add something extra by having you jump up and onto the stage from a hidden trapdoor amidst an explosive burst of pyro."   
Rikki shrugged, relieved at being spared from the bungee jumping.   
"Oh, okay then," he muttered, when Jericho suddenly thought of something and cut in frantically, "Wait...wait a minute! You want me to be thrown across the stage and muss my perfect gorgeous hair?!"   
"No! I said we were going to pay tribute to the whole swinging like a pendulum across the stage on bungee chords, I didn't say we were going to do the exact same thing!" Roxy yelled. Jericho looked relieved.   
"Oh, okay, then," he chirped brightly, echoing Rikki's words. Roxy, after having calmed down, proceeded to lay forth her vision of the music video.   
"What we're going to do," she began to explain, "is to drop all three guitar players down onto the stage from bungee chords. Then, right before the vocals start, the lead singer will explode onto the stage--literally--by springing up from a hidden trap door built underneath the stage and emerging in a shower of sparks and pyrotechnics. And then the band is just going to perform live and interact playfully with each other and with the audience, especially Rikki, who will lead the crowd into a sing along during the chorus of, "Panama!" by aiming his microphone stand toward the audience. Got it?"   
The band shrugged.   
"Got it," they muttered in unison, and began climbing onto the stage, with Roxy shouting out directions.   
"Okay, Jericho, get behind your drum set! Lance, Pietro, and Morgan, stand ready to be attached to the bungee chords and raised high above the stage and near the ceiling! Rikki get into your secret compartment underneath the stage and prepare to jump up on cue!" she hollered, cupping her hands around her mouth to increase her decibels. 

Pietro glanced around nervously as a bunch of technicians attached wires and chords around his waist.   
"I don't know about this," he complained, watching as Lance and Morgan were also helped into their bungee chords. "I mean, what if the thing breaks or some other accident happens? I mean, what if the idiots lowering us down drop us onto our heads or something?"   
"Relax, Maximoff, nothing's gonna happen," Lance assured him. Morgan, meanwhile, giggled happily as the technicians tried to attach the bungee chord around her tiny waist, squealing, "Hey, that tickles!" Finally, the technicians finished their jobs, and handed Lance, Pietro, and Morgan their respective guitars, who proceeded to shoulder on the straps around their bodies and stood to be lifted off the stage. Meanwhile, below on the stage, Roxy was shouting, "'All right, places everybody! Hey, you people in the front row! Yeah, you! I paid you good money to act like slutty fangirls, so start skanking around already, and you better make it good!" After she had gotten everything set up just the way she liked it, Roxy sprinted off the stage, slid into her director's chair, and yelled dramatically, "And...action!" 

The playful intro to "Panama" started blaring over the sound system, and right on cue, the technicians dropped the three Ömega guitarists hard and fast down onto the stage in blurs of flashy colors. Unfortunately, however, nobody had taken into the account the actual sizes of the guitar players. First down was Mini-Me Morgan, who, at barely four foot eight, turned out to be too short to actually reach the ground, and dangled comically a good two feet above the stage, flailing her legs about and wailing, "Hey! Somebody get me down!" And as if that wasn't bad enough, the opposite happened with Lance, who was actually too tall to be dropped down on the length of the bungee chord, and ended up falling flat on his butt, smacking his behind dangerously near a flash pot and setting it off. A spark of pyrotechnic explosions lit up the stage prematurely, as Lance hollered, "Yeow! My butt!" Apparently, it turned out that the leather pants he'd been crammed into were highly flammable. Pietro, fortunately, turned out to be of just the right height, and was lowered down onto the stage without incident, landing gracefully on his feet and immediately proceeding to tear it up onstage with his rhythm guitar, happily oblivious to the predicaments of his fellow guitar players. Roxy sighed, as she yelled, "Cut! All right, people, let's adjust the length of the bungee chords next time, get Morgan down before she goes off on another one of her Spaz Trips, and for God's sake, somebody _please_ extinguish Lance's flaming ass!" 

* * *

Jennifer frowned, biting down on her lower lip as she read over the scathing review by some MTV bigshot. Sighing and repressing the unfamiliar urge to flip the bird to the bitter old MTV cronie, she finally settled for simply closing the window and turning to face Roxy.   
"You think we should let the band get a hold of this?" she asked quietly. "They'll be so hurt to find out that the first review of their music video is so terrible, and actually goes as far as condemning them as a watered-down third-generation crew of Van Halen poseurs."   
Roxy sneered.   
"Well, well, well, who would have thought that the two-faced, Britney-worshipping assclowns at MTV knew such big words?" she scorned, not at all intimidated by the scathing review. Jennifer shrugged, before making a mental note to refer all future bashers to Roxy for a tongue-lashing from that day forth.   
"Still, it's not fair to keep the band in the dark about these kinds of things," she murmured hesitantly. "I should probably go talk to them, and see if I can gently ease them into this review."   
"Oh, uh...it's not really a wise idea to go looking for them right now," Roxy muttered quickly. Jennifer arched an eyebrow, beginning to look wary.   
"You mean they're not in the studio?" she guessed, already knowing what the answer was going to be.   
"Hey, what's the point of keeping them locked up in the studio after they've finished recording for the day?" Roxy spoke up defensively. Jennifer ran a hand through her hair, as she grilled the producer/publicist for more details.   
"So where did they go?" she asked in dismay, dreading what the reply was going to be.   
"Oh, nowhere that they can raise hell or anything like that," Roxy mumbled. She then cleared her throat, as she added casually, as though seeing nothing wrong with what had happened, "After tidying up around the studio, the band ran off to some strip bar, dragging a kicking and screaming Morgan with them."   
Jennifer nearly rocketed right through the ceiling when she heard those words.   
_"What?!"_ she gasped in horror. "How...how could you let them?! In case you haven't realized yet, most--if not the entire band--are not even of legal age!"   
Roxy scowled, as Jennifer continued to holler and sputter and generally freak out.   
"Hey, hey, hey, it's just some Jack Daniel's and a bunch of dancing girls," the dark-haired producer muttered grouchily. "What's the big deal...?"   
Jennifer, knowing the band's spectacular track record after their recent hell-raising at a hospital--a _hospital, _of all places!--had already grabbed her coat and shot out of the studio before Roxy had finished speaking. 

* * *

"I'm outta luck, outta love   
Gotta photograph, picture of   
Passion killer, *hic* you're too much   
You're the only one I wanna *hic* touch." 

The rest of Ömega noisily joined in with Rikki, and sang out the opening lines of Def Leppard's "Photograph" in a loud, drunken stupor. Onstage at the Girls! Girls! Girls! strip club, the all-sluts--um, that is, all-girls--house band, appropriately titled Vixxxen, glared down at the noisy patrons, before their front woman whined, "Boss, they're stealing our thunder!" The owner of Girls! Girls! Girls! shrugged, before taking the cheap cigar out of his mouth and grumbling, "So take your tops off or sumthin'!"   
"Oh, okay!" the front woman replied cheerfully, as Vixxxen resumed its set. 

The members of Ömega, sans Pietro, meanwhile, were crowded into a booth near the front, laughing obnoxiously about everything and nothing (since that _is_ what ten shots of whiskey and fifteen glasses of red wine can do to a person) and generally annoying the customers who were trying to concentrate on their lap dances. Just then, Pietro returned to their table, carrying with him some nice fistfuls of cash, and Rikki brightened up as he sang out happily, "Hey...now we can finally afford some champagne! It's about damn time!" He would have gone off on a tirade about the overpriced champagne and said something more, but a wave of drunken hiccupping and insane giggling took over, and the band was thankfully spared. Morgan glanced up from the giant turkey burger she was working on, as she trilled in a nasal, high-pitched voice, "Hey, where did ya get all that green?" Pietro grinned, before proudly replying, "Oh, some pathetic old fat guy was trying to stuff these down a stripper's G-string, so I, being the chivalrous gentleman that I am, stepped in and told the fat bastard to stop harassing the nice slut, and when he wouldn't listen, I had no choice but to intervene by force and take the money away."   
"Aw, that's so *hic* nice..." Morgan crooned, as Rikki reached over to take the money away from Pietro, waving the bundles of green wildly in the air as he sang out, "Waiter!" 

Just then, Vixxxen finished their third song, a horrific cover of--you guessed it, Mötley Crüe's "Girls Girls Girls"--and Ömega promptly responded by booing loudly.   
"Aw, that's the worst-sounding shit I've ever heard!" Rikki sang out obnoxiously. Clearing his throat as he stood up and puffed out his chest like some He-Man going off to battle, the dark-haired lead singer started toward the stage, taking a total of all but three steps before he stumbled and fell, giggling madly.   
"Oh, no!" Morgan shrieked. "Someone call an ambulance! Rikki's having a heart attack!" Fortunately, nobody paid any attention to her, and with Lance's help, Rikki was soon on his feet again. This time, he started tottering unsteadily in what was actually the opposite direction of the stage, before smacking full-force into a, ahem, top-heavy girl wearing nothing but feathery white lingerie designed into the world's naughtiest nurse's uniform. She glanced up at the tall, dark-haired youth who'd bumped into her, working her full mouth into a pouty, seductive smile as she purred throatily, "Hey there, tall, dark, and handsome. Care to go to the back?" Rikki looked down cluelessly at the busty stripper who'd attached herself to him, before mumbling, "Oh, no, I ain't going backstage, I just want to get onstage." And he disentangled himself from the stripper and resumed stumbling forward, this time in the right direction. Rikki reached the stage just as Vixxxen's guitarist struggled to go into the riff that opened Poison's "Talk Dirty To Me", pulled himself up with no problem, and promptly shoved the lead singer off the stage, who went tumbling down with a nasal shriek.   
"All right, you pathetic horny bastards who can't even score with your inflatable sex dolls!" he began in a loud, obnoxious yell directed to the Girls! Girls! Girls! patrons. "Let's get some real music in here!" And before anyone could stop him, Rikki promptly began belting out the lyrics to "Photograph", as Vixxxen's guitarist and bassist glared over at him while the drummer, comfortably nestled behind him with a strategic view, busied herself with checking out Rikki's leather-clad ass. 

"I'm outta *hic* luck, outta love   
Gotta photograph, picture of   
Passion *hic* killer, you're too *hic*much   
You're the only *hic* one I wanna touch." 

By then, the other, equally drunk members of Ömega had clambered onto the stage next to Rikki, shoving off the crappy guitar and bass players of Vixxxen as they joined in on belting out a stunning rendition of "Photograph". 

"I see your *hic* face every time I dream   
On every page, every *hic* magazine   
So wild, so free, so far from *hic* me 

The other members of the band stopped expectantly, as Rikki took a deep breath, somehow having remembered Roxy's instructions to go higher than Axl Rose, Joe Elliott, and Robert Plant in their prime combined, before shrieking out in a keening, abrasive screech, "You're all I want, my _faaaaaantaaaasyyyyyyy!"_

*Crack* *Crack* *Shatter* *Shatter*   
"Aaaaaiiiiieee!!!" The strippers who'd been dancing inside their glass cages wailed, as Rikki's shrill scream succeeded in breaking all the glass objects in the strip club, and patrons scrambled up to catch the fallen hooters as they were dumped unceremoniously from their shattered crystal enclosures. Meanwhile, a gloating Rikki preened, "See, I so totally can go higher!" 

* * *

"...And another thing, Missy, if I ever, _ever_ see your crew of jackasses within a one-mile radius of myself and my lovely sluts--um, I mean, my lovely ladies--I am going to have the swarm of bloodthirsty lawyers on your ass so fast, you won't have time to call for a defense attorney!"   
Jennifer sighed as the owner of the Girls! Girls! Girls! strip club yelled at her, and surveyed the scene, including all the glass that Rikki and his Mighty Screech O' Doom had shattered. Why had she thought that this would be different? Ömega had found a way to get a lawsuit thrown at them from a local hospital, _of course_ they would have found a way to raise hell at some strip bar! Gingerly stepping over a discarded blue thong, she began to apologize profusely.   
"Um, did you by any chance hear them say where they would be going next?" Jennifer spoke up timidly after she was done apologizing. The strip club owner scowled venomously, before biting out, "No, I didn't! They got their hands on a review by some MTV assclown, and set out looking for blood before my attorneys arrived." Jennifer's eyes widened in dismay.   
"Oh, no..." she groaned. 

Just then, her cell phone began ringing, right on cue. Jennifer sighed tiredly, as she pulled her cell phone out of her coat, before placing it to her ear and greeting, "Yeah?"   
"Um...oh, no, wait, I forgot your name again! Hold on a second!" the bumbling male voice eeped, and Jennifer rolled her eyes, already knowing which band member Ömega had selected to call her. Meanwhile, back over the other end of the line, she could distinctly hear Jericho ask frantically, "What the hell do you mean you don't know what her name is?!" Rikki's annoyed growl replied back, "I mean I don't know what her damn name is! Just make something up or whatever!" Jericho and Rikki exchanged some more angry words, before Jericho picked up the phone again and spoke to Jennifer, "Uh...Ginger, right? That's your name, isn't it?" Jennifer rolled her eyes, and decided that it wasn't worth correcting the bumbling blonde for the ten thousandth time.   
"Fine, fine, my name's Ginger," she grumbled, as Jericho gloated, "Yes! And Rikki thinks I'm an airhead, ha!"   
"So, got yourselves into a load of crap again, huh?" Jennifer demanded.   
"Um...yeah? Think you can bail us out, Ginge?" Jericho eeped in a tiny voice. In response, the brunette manager sighed, before tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.   
"Sure, sure. Here, just put the critic on the line and I'll apologize for you," she instructed.   
"Uh...that's not quite what we had in mind," Jericho spoke up. Jennifer started up in alarm.   
"Well, what _did_ you have in mind?" she asked cautiously.   
"Um...we meant bail us out, as in literally?" Jericho squeaked out guiltily. Jennifer nearly hit the roof, as she hollered, "What?! How the hell did you land yourselves in prison over a freakin' review of all things?!" Jericho eeped again, before replying, "Well...you see, we kind of found out the hard way that assaulting a bitter know-it-all MTV jackass--no matter how much everyone hates him--will still land your ass in jail!" 

* * *

*All right, end of Chapter Four. Chapter Five is where the band will be doing all the publicity appearances to promote their forthcoming album, including a radio show gone awry involving front man Rikki Stixx, and even the Toxic Twins--um, I mean, Lance and Pietro, *coughcough*--dropping by unexpectedly at Rogue's TRHell! See ya then! ^_^ 


	6. Chapter Five: Pop! Go The Guitarists

**Chapter Five: Pop! Go The Guitarists**

* * *

It was what every frat boy called his humble abode, and what every parent deemed a hideous nightmare: tattered furniture scattered sparsely here and there, a worn and ripped fuzzy pink shag of a carpet, mountains of beer cans and wine bottles, posters of half-naked swimsuit models and guitar gods serving as wallpaper...and even two teenage boys passed out cold on a tattered old couch, bottles of cheap vodka and even cheaper wine still lodged in between them. Suddenly, the door to Apartment No. 666 slammed wide open, and an uncharacteristically furious Roxy Oyama stormed in, glaring murderous daggers as she surveyed the scene and ignoring the horrendous screeching of someone belting out showtunes in the showers. Her eyes settling on the two boys slumbering peacefully amidst the beer cans and Jack Daniel's, Roxy let out a little growl, before she stalked purposefully toward the duo and seethed furiously, "All right, you two little jackasses! Up! Up! Get up if you know what's good for you!" And without waiting for the drowsy boys to fully recuperate from their previous night of heavy drinking, partying, and hell-raising, Roxy grabbed both by their ears and pulled them up painfully.   
"Ow! Owowowow!" Lance and Pietro whined, as the enraged Roxy dragged them up and through the sea of empty and crushed beer cans. Jericho, wearing only a towel and nothing else, stopped trilling out his atrocious version of "(Oh) Pretty Woman" as he peeked out curiously from behind the bathroom door, as Roxy shoved Ömega's own Toxic Twins out of the apartment. 

"Ow! Hey, watch the hair!" Pietro grumbled, as the furious producer roughly dragged him out of the apartment. Lance winced, before muttering, "Yeah, what's your problem, Rox?"   
"Hey, maybe it's that time of the month again," Pietro giggled into Lance's ear, trying to keep his voice down but unable to do so due to still being rather wasted from the previous night's drunken escapades. Lance laughed loudly, even though had he been sober he wouldn't have graced such words with much more than a snide smirk or two. Unfortunately for the Toxic Twins, however, Roxy was in no mood to be hassled, as she turned around and promptly bitch slapped the living daylights right out of the duo.   
"Ow!" both echoed at the same time, raising hands to identical red marks slashed across their cheeks, before Pietro pouted, "What was that for?"   
_"That _was for insinuating that I had PMS," Roxy seethed. She then raised one of her spiked-heel-adorned feet, and kicked them in the shins. As Lance and Pietro hopped about and sulked, Roxy added, bristling, "And _that_ was for what you two did to my car!" Lance and Pietro stopped amidst their kangaroo imitations, blinking wide clueless eyes, before Lance echoed stupidly, "Your car?"   
"Yes," Roxy hissed, "my car!" And she swept her hand to her nice, new, steely black Mercedes SUV, which, over the course of the night, had somehow wound up halfway submerged in the dinky pool, trailing pieces of the chainlink fence and pine trunks behind it, motors still running and radio blaring Nirvana at ninety decibels.   
"Oh." Lance and Pietro turned to look at the ravaged car, before bursting into giggles. Roxy glared at them incredulously.   
"What the hell are you laughing about?!" she steamed. Lance stopped laughing for a second, long enough to sputter out, "You were listening to Nirvana."   
"Yeah, I thought Roxy Oyama, Super Producer, was far too good to listen to, and I quote, grimy, grungy, greasy-haired, flannel-wearing, goatee-sprouting Seattle stoners who look and, more like than not, smell as though they've just woken up from their beds in the Salvation Army's storage bin!" Pietro snickered, clutching his stomach. Roxy looked positively incensed, as she screeched at the boys, "That wasn't me who was blasting Seattle grunge in my car, that was you guys!"   
"Huh?" Lance and Pietro looked confused for a second, before Lance made a half-hearted attempt to snap his fingers as he remembered.   
"Oh, yeah." Turning to Pietro, he chirped brightly, "We borrowed the nice lady's car last night to go to the photo shoot for that local guitar magazine, remember?" Pietro hiccupped, before nodding.   
"Oh, yeah," he drawled lazily. Roxy bristled, as she hissed through clenched teeth, _"Borrowed?!_ You two assclowns freakin' jumped into my car while I was unloading the groceries and took off, yelling, "Jerónimo!"   
"Bleh, borrowed, hijacked, same difference," Lance hiccupped, swatting one hand back and forth as if to demonstrate the simplicity of the whole thing.   
"Grrr..." Roxy looked like she wanted to strangle Ömega's Toxic Twins. 

Fortunately for Lance and Pietro, Jennifer intervened just in time, as she pulled up in a beige Corolla and got out of the car, right when Roxy was moving in to kill the Twins.   
"Hey, glad to see you two are up so early," the pretty brunette manager called out, sounding surprisingly cheerful as she pushed her sunglasses into her hair, especially considering the fact that only a mere week had passed since she'd had to bail the band out of jail for assaulting a critic.   
"...I'm telling you, that...that...evil dictator chick, whatever her name may be, is about to kill our new guitar players!" Jericho's voice drifted over, as the blonde drummer, still clad in only a skimpy towel, dragged a pissed-looking yet somehow already glammed out Rikki and a sleepy, pajamas-clad Morgan clutching her psychedelic giant pink teddy bear out of the apartment. The trio stopped, when they saw Jennifer, Roxy, and the perfectly unharmed Lance and Pietro, save for one painful-looking red slap mark apiece. Jericho frowned.   
"Hey," he grumbled, "everyone's still alive!"   
"That's right, and it's a good thing, too, because Roxy has already scheduled publicity appearances to promote Ömega's upcoming debut album for all five of you today," Jennifer spoke up. Jericho scrunched up his perfect face when he heard her speak, as he turned to look at her, blinking wide innocent eyes.   
"Hey...I know you," he mumbled. Jennifer rolled her eyes.   
"Well, I should hope so, seeing how I've been managing this band for the past two years--against my better judgment," she muttered. Jericho was snapping his fingers, struggling to remember.   
"You're...Janet...Janine...Geri..." he murmured, ticking the names off on his fingers. He suddenly lit up, as he exclaimed proudly, "Oh, oh, I know what your name is! It's Jericho! Oh, no wait, that's _my_ name!" Jennifer threw up her hands in frustration, and snapped, "Forget it! You'll never learn my name, you blonde airhead!" Roxy, meanwhile, who'd forced herself to calm down over her destroyed Mercedes SUV, had reverted back to her usual take-charge professional attitude, as she barked out instructions at the band.   
"Listen up, all five of you--especially _you_, Jericho--go get dressed! Rikki, you're supposed to do an interview for rock radio station 107.7 WHIP today, Lance and Pietro, you guys have been booked to drop by the local music channel for their daily edition of Pop! Goes The Music Video, and Jericho and Morgan, you two have been granted the cover story in next month's edition of a local rock & roll magazine, meaning you'll meet with a reporter at the coffeehouse in about two hours."   
"Jeez, all right, all right," Jericho grumbled, and began heading back to the apartment, using one hand to keep his towel around his waist rather than at his feet, while Morgan chirped brightly, "Aye aye, cap'n!" Rikki glared, discreetly giving the producer the finger as he retreated to his room, and Lance and Pietro, still feeling the effects from the previous night's drunken partying, giggled, hiccupped, and hobbled their way to their rooms to get dressed. 

* * *

Pietro paced nervously back and forth in the television station's waiting room, fidgeting around as he waited for the cue signaling it was Ömega's turn to go on. Lance, meanwhile, calmly sat on a leather couch, flipping casually through that month's issue of _Guitar World, _which sported a cover shot of Creed's own Mark Tremonti tearing through a six-string amidst a fiery explosion of red-hot pyro. The dark-haired guitarist barely glanced up as a bored and antsy Pietro zipped aimlessly around the room, before boredly saying as a gust of wind breezed through his hair, "Hey, calm down there, little buddy. It's just an interview; they're not asking you to play to Mystique or anything like that." Pietro stopped running around, as he fretted, "I know, and I'm not worried about appearing on live TV or anything like that; I'm just wondering what's taking them so long! Surely no guest is interesting enough to go on before me...unless they're actually saving the best for last!" Lance snorted, before returning to his magazine.   
"Sure, delude yourself into thinking whatever you want," he muttered. Clearing his throat and speaking in a louder voice, he added, "But stay still, would ya? People are bound to come in here and notice something's up...and besides, you wouldn't want to muss your perfect hair right before appearing on live TV, now would you?" Pietro eeped in a squeaky voice, and obediently sat down, as Lance snickered and resumed browsing, adding under his breath in an amused voice, "Sucker."   
"Hey!" Pietro pouted. "I heard that!" 

Just then, one of the technicians peeked his head into the room, calling out, "All right you two, you're on in five, gotcha?"   
"Sure, whatever," Lance muttered, barely glancing up from his magazine, while Pietro busied himself with critiquing the awful decor of the studio. Taking notice of the massive posters of some new pop princess called Alison Blair, Pietro ooh-ed, "Damn, look at how big and tacky those things are!" Unfortunately for the smaller half of Ömega's own Toxic Twins, right about that moment, a rather, ahem, well-proportioned forty-three-year-old producer walked into the room, just in time to hear the silver-haired rock guitarist's remark about the Alison Blair posters and assume he was talking about her two bouncing little friends. Her eyes widened in anger at the rude comment, as she vowed to do something about it. 

"Hey! Ow! Quit it, ya old hag, I wasn't talking about your drooping thousand-year-old boobs! Hey! Owie owie owie! What did you do that for?!"   
Five seconds later, Pietro was running frantically around the room--at a painstakingly normal pace, since he didn't want to give away the fact that he was a mutant--being chased by the furious forty-three-year-old producer and getting clobbered over the head by her massive...purse (what did you think I was gonna say?) every now and then, while Lance watched on in amusement. 

* * *

"Thanks for dropping that coffee table on her," Pietro panted, standing gingerly behind the curtain waiting for his cue to go on. Lance shrugged.   
"Hey, no prob," he replied pleasantly. "That's what friends are for, right? She'll wake up with a concussion, forget everything that happened, and blame her work schedule for her pounding headache before going to whichever executive has the pleasure of working with her to demand a well-deserved vacation."   
Pietro gingerly tested out a painful red bump that was beginning to form on his perfect cute head, and grimaced before huffing, "Not that I'm not grateful or anything, but did you _have_ to wait until five seconds before we were to go on to knock her out?"   
Lance shrugged again.   
"Hey, it was fun watching you run around with a fifty-year-old grandma chasing after you with her handbag," he snickered. "Should have gotten it on tape, then I could have submitted it to _America's Funniest Home Videos_ or something like that, and made a hundred bucks."   
Pietro glared at him, but before a fistfight could break out between the Terror Twins themselves, a very familiar, Southern-accented, highly grumpy female voice announced, "And that was that...video..."   
"Objection: Tango," her male co-host filled in, chirping out the words like the excited leader of the teenybopper army that he was.   
"Yeah, whatever, from that annoying bleached blonde bimbo from Barbie Hell with the ear-grating voice," his petulant co-hostess grumbled.   
"Aw, you mean the sizzling Shakira, don't ya?" the guy piped up.   
"If you say so." One could tell with no trouble that his co-hostess was rolling her eyes, without even needing to look at her. She cleared her throat, as she added, "Anyway, our last guests for today hail all the way from the rock & roll club scene of New York. Please welcome the guitar players for Ömega, heavy metal extraordinaires deemed the next Guns N' Roses--only hopefully without the in-fighting and eventual break up!"   
Silence. Crickets chirped. The grouchy hostess remarked snidely, "Oh, yeah, I forgot, you mindlessly giggling yahoos have no idea who the original lineup of Guns N' Roses are." 

Lance and Pietro emerged from the back and onto the makeshift podium where the music talk show was being shot, greeted by a round of mindless screaming from the hyper schoolgirls and their spineless boyfriends they'd dragged along with them. The hostess, decked out in a hideous pink sweater top and bell-bottom jeans and with microphone in hand, turned around to greet them, before her mouth dropped open in recognition, as she gasped out, "Oh, good grief! Lance, Pietro..._you're_ the rock guitarists of underground sensation Ömega?" Lance and Pietro, meanwhile, gawked in openmouthed amazement at the pink-and-blue-clad hostess, before Lance squeaked out, "Rogue?!" at the same time that Pietro wailed, "What the hell did they do to your hair?" Rogue gingerly patted her bubblegum-pink pigtails, as she groaned, "They said that my regular appearance might scare the teenyboppers, and then attacked me with pink hair dye and pastel ribbons!"   
"Oh, wow! Who'd have thought you actually have color in your cheeks? I mean, gee, with that pasty white face and the black makeup, we were beginning to think you were a permanent KISS groupie wannabe or something!" Lance, having gotten over his initial shock of finding out Rogue of all people was the hostess of the teenybopper crapfest, remarked snidely. Rogue glared at him, before gritting out through clenched teeth, "My, one of these days, you _must_ tell us how you got into a band without even knowing how to tell a bass from a regular guitar!" Lance blushed furiously, as Pietro chirped, "Hey, how'd you know that?" Rogue blinked in surprise, before exclaiming in delight, "You mean you really couldn't tell a bass from a guitar?!" Lance's face turned even redder, before he mumbled defensively, "Hey, at least I didn't mistake a freakin' _cello_ for a guitar!" At this, Pietro began to blush, as Rogue alternated between staring at Lance to staring at Pietro, olive-green eyes alive with amusement. 

"Hey, it appears as if our very own Rogue knows these two hard rock guitar players," the voice of the male host chirped brightly, as Rogue's eyes widened. "Why don't we give them a great big hearty Pop! Goes The Music Video welcome?!"   
At his words, the teenyboppers started screaming their lungs out on cue, and Rogue's eyes widened, as she moaned, "Oh, no! Not again! Not so soon!" As Lance and Pietro stared dumbfounded at the shrieking teenyboppers, Rogue sighed, grouchily snapping, "Yes! Yes, I'll admit it! This is where I've been working for the past three months!" Meanwhile, her male co-host was bubbling happily, "Now, since we have two of those nice rocker people here, it's only fair we even things out by bringing out the one, the only, pop princess Alison Blair!" Pietro's eyes widened, as he remember the big, tacky posters--and then the fat dinosaur who'd repeatedly clobbered him over the head with her purse--as the teenyboppers screamed and cheered, Lance grimaced and covered his ears, and Rogue groaned, "Great, more of those yahoos!" Her co-host had one of those stupid grins on his face, as he shrugged, "Hey, the more the merrier, I always say! All right, guys, please give a big Pop! Goes The Music Video welcome to the always dazzling Alison Blair!" 

Cheesy, upbeat, tooth-decayingly sweet music started playing, and it took Lance and Pietro a total of five minutes to figure out it was actually pop, as a pretty blonde girl dressed in clear green shades and a ridiculously expensive designer pink tank top that anyone could have gotten for five bucks at the local thrift store entered the room. And, just in case somebody didn't know who she was, the name ALISON was printed in diamond lettering across her chest. She grinned in that nauseatingly sweet way, blowing kisses to the audience of screaming teenyboppers as she happily bounced her way onto the stage, while Rogue muttered grumpily, "Let's welcome the dazzling Alison Blair."   
"Now," Rogue's co-host was chirping, "what we're going to do here is play a very fun game with Ali and the boys! Yay!"   
"Oh, wow, I can't wait," Rogue muttered sarcastically, as the teenyboppers cheered and the insanely bubbly Alison jumped up and down and clapped, and Lance and Pietro just stared boggle-eyed.   
"What we're going to have to do, is to give you lucky guitar slingers the chance to win a date with the sexy Miss Blair!" the co-host was chirping. "Now, this is just like the dating game, in which Alison will ask both of you a number of allotted questions, before choosing one of you lucky guys to be her date for the evening! Doesn't that sound totally awesome?!" As the teenyboppers cheered and a preening and smiling Alison danced her way to her pink chair, blowing kisses all the way, the dazed Lance and Pietro were shoved into their seats and handed cordless microphones with which to answer.   
"Go ahead, Ali, these wild rockers are all yours." Apparently, wild rocker in teenybopper language was two dazed guitarists who'd gone into culture shock upon hearing the tooth-decayingly sweet teenypop music.   
"Um...okay," Alison mumbled. Turning to face Rogue, she hissed, "What am I supposed to say to them? I've never hung out with bad boys before!" Rogue scowled, preparing to tell the teen queen exactly what she thought of her...before an idea suddenly occurred to her. Eyes gleaming mischievously, Rogue leaned in and whispered something to the blonde pop tart. Alison's gold eyebrows nearly flew off her forehead, as she asked, "Are you sure I should tell them _that_ about me?" In response, Rogue only gave an evil grin, which the pop tart happily mistook for a reassuring smile, and chirped, "All right, then!" Clearing her throat dramatically, Alison blurted out brightly, "I'm a size 34C! What about you guys?!" Lance fell off his chair, as Pietro struggled to remember what exactly a size 34C was, and _then_ fell off his chair.   
"Uh, Alison..." The male co-host quickly rushed up to whisper something into her ear, darting a nasty look at the gloating Rogue, and Alison finally nodded brightly.   
"Oh, okay then," she chirped. Turning to face the two rockers, she sang out, "Like, um, Hunky Guy Number One--" Pietro was wearing the number one tag, with Lance sporting number two, "--from what you can see right here, if you had to describe me with a type of food, what would it be?" Pietro struggled to return to his seat, pondering over this subject, but before he could reply, Lance had already snorted and muttered snidely, "Certainly not a cherry, that's for sure!" Alison looked offended.   
"Hey, just what makes you think I'm not as cute and sweet as a little cherry?" she huffed, before clearing her throat and muttering, "Never mind! If you're so smart, then here's _your_ question: In your opinion, who's hotter: Justin or Enrique?" Lance stared boggle-eyed at her.   
"What kind of crappy question is that?!" he exploded, as the teenyboppers and the co-host all gasped at the obscene word, while Alison covered her head and wailed, "My virgin ears!" Pietro began to look wary.   
"C'mon, Alvers, let's get out of here before they decide to lynch us or something for being obscene," he muttered. Lance shrugged, casually following Pietro in exiting the room. Alison, meanwhile, was staring wide-eyed at the two departing guitarists, before her lips began to tremble and she wailed, "You...you're standing me up?" At her words, the co-host gasped, turning to his army of teenyboppers and saying in a dead serious tone, "This is blasphemy! How could anyone dare stand the dazzling Alison Blair up?!" 

"Uh oh..." Despite the fact that she usually hated the Brotherhood's guts--especially after the whole KISS thing--Rogue decided that nobody, not even the Brotherhood, deserved that cruel and unusual a punishment: Death by teenybopper. The usually cold and sarcastic young woman quickly turned to Lance and Pietro, and pushed them off the stage.   
"Quick!" she instructed frantically. "Get out of here while you still can! This is only the first stage! Run! Get out of here before they take you too!" The two Ömega guitarists responded with confused and bewildered stares, but one good look at Rogue's terrified expression, then at the hysterically wailing and screaming teenyboppers, and the two so-very-tough Brotherhood bad boys promptly split, getting the hell out of the Pop! Goes The Music Video studios as fast as...well, as the considerably lighter Pietro could drag Lance with him. With the angry teenyboppers hot on their heels, the two pulled the driver out of the nearest car--which just conveniently happened to be a nice, new red Mercedes Benz--and jumped into it after having sacrificed the ponytail-sporting owner to the teenyboppers by throwing him into a ditch to serve as a temporary obstacle for the swarm of schoolgirls and their pathetic spineless boyfriends ready to put them on trial for standing up one of their teen idols. Gunning the engine, the two promptly took off in their second hijacked car in one week (the first being Roxy's prided Mercedes SUV). Lance glanced back at the Teenybopper Army, and noted with relief that they were growing smaller and smaller with each car that swerved out of Pietro's way as he drove recklessly toward the apartment.   
"Whew," Lance mumbled, sinking back into his seat, "guess we lost 'em." He then began patting his pockets, and a frown knitted his eyebrows, as he muttered, "Oh, great. I think I lost our keys!" Pietro flushed guiltily.   
"Eh heh...that would be me who lost our keys," he eeped, as Lance turned to him and groaned, "Maximoff!"   
"Hey, this is the thanks that I get for saving you from those teenyboppers?" the silver-haired rhythm guitarist mumbled defensively. He then shrugged, adding, "Hey, don't worry--I'm sure Rikki's home by now. He'll let us into the apartment." 

* * *

*Hey, Random Insanity, I really like your idea for having the old band members--especially the ones who have issues with the current ones--come back and raise some hell! I'm going to incorporate that into Rikki's radio interview next chapter *evil grin*. 


	7. Chapter Six: Rixx Radio

**Chapter Six: Rixx Radio**

* * *

Rikki walked into the room just as the DJ finished speaking.   
"...And that was "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, one of my personal faves," she was saying. Clearing her throat, the tall, dark-haired DJ added, "Coming up next, we'll have a live interview with the lead singer of one of the up-and-coming heavy metal bands that has been bubbling underground for a couple of years now and is ready to burst onto the surface and take the hard rock world by storm." Rikki waited impatiently until the On-Air light blinked off, before ambling into the room and growling, "C'mon, let's get this promotional crap over with!" Taking a seat next to the DJ and putting on the pair of headphones, Rikki impatiently cracked his knuckles as he waited for the commercials to end, never once taking notice of who the actual DJ was. Unfortunately, the DJ didn't bother to glance in his direction either, and it wasn't until the show was back on the air that she bothered to spare him a look, as she automatically started to say, "And we're back here on 107.7 WHIP, with our special guest..." Her jaw dropped open in recognition, as she gawked at Rikki, who arched an eyebrow and returned her wide stare with a bored look.   
"Oh, my God! Rikki Stixx! It's you, isn't it, you little S.O.B.!" she hollered furiously, her surprise turning to anger. Rikki shot her a bored look, demanding sullenly, "Yeah, am I supposed to know who you are?" She didn't _look_ like a groupie...   
"It's me, you assclown! Amber!"   
Rikki appeared unimpressed, so Amber further prodded, "Amber Crowley? Your former lead guitarist?" When Rikki still looked clueless about her identity, Amber hissed, "You stole my frickin' hairspray to do a magazine photo shoot, remember?!" At that, Rikki's eyes lit up in recognition, as he crowed, "Oh, yeah, you're the crazy vampire wannabe chick!" He looked her up and down, and his upper lip twisted up in a smug Billy Idol-esque sneer, as he added, "Gee, didn't recognize ya there looking like a normal human being." Amber snorted.   
"Hn, same thing can be said for you, Rixx!" she shot back. And then Amber added grouchily, "The radio station made me buy a new preppy wardrobe, on account of my regular attire freaking out the other DJs...Stop laughing! That ain't funny, Rixx, and you know it!"   
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever," Rikki snorted in an insulting tone of voice, and then turned his attention to the control panel, murmuring, "Hn, what's with all these blinking lights?" while Amber bristled. Shrugging and deciding that the best way to find out was to press one, Rikki reached out and pushed the first one, as Amber suddenly remembered something and smacked her forehead, groaning, "Oh, no! I completely forgot--we're on the air!" But it was too late, and the first caller--a schoolgirl with a squeaky, nasal voice--was already gushing over the phone, "Hey, you, like, totally sound, like, hella sexy! Are you, like, hella sexy?" While Rikki smirked and gloated, Amber growled, "Gee, I sure hope you're talking about the giant jackass that just walked in, and not me," and reached over and turned it off before a preening Rikki could reply.   
"We ain't taking no phone calls yet," she grumbled, as she reached over to her stack of carefully prepared question cards, before realizing that this was Rikki she was talking about, and deciding to throw them out the window--literally.   
"All right, listen, Rixx, I don't like you and you don't like me, and we both know this interview ain't gonna work out and we'll wind up destroying the *bleep*-ing studio if we're around each other for a long period of time," she began in a rushed string of words, as Rikki glanced up at the audio system, before remarking, "Hey, cool, you've got one of those automatic censors too, just like Roxy." Amber arched an eyebrow, as she inquired, "Who's Roxy? Your new squeeze-toy?" Rikki shook his head.   
"Naw, she's too much of a high-maintenance *bleep*, plus she scares the hell out of me," he replied, casually propping his feet up on the control panel. Amber smirked.   
"Hn, I like her already," she gloated, receiving a nasty glare from her former boyfriend and band mate. Clearing her throat, Amber added, "Anyway, like I was saying, there's no need for us to spend any more time with each other than is necessary, so I'll just ask the absolutely essential questions that my bosses are forcing on me, and you can just get the hell out of here. Got it?" Rikki shrugged.   
"Eh, whatever," he sneered insolently, while Amber glared and struggled to control her temper.   
"All right, let's get this crapfest over with," she muttered. Clearing her throat, Amber began her interrogation. "Okay, when's the album coming out, what's it called, and what can we expect? And make it snappy, I don't want to lose my job by attacking a guest."   
"All right, fine," Rikki grouched. "Six weeks, _Backlash, _and expect amped-up guitar riffs and a return to eighties' heavy metal and hard rock."   
"Great, great," Amber mumbled. "All right, next question: Does Jericho still leave the doors wide open when he showers?"   
Rikki snapped up in confusion.   
"Huh?" His gum promptly fell out of his mouth, as the flustered Amber blushed and tee heed, "Oh, dear, how did _that_ get in there?" Coughing and clearing her throat, Amber quickly moved on to the next question.   
"Can we expect any live performances in the near future?" she snapped grouchily, as Rikki thought for a while, before replying, "Well, we have some club dates with Valentino's in the next couple of weeks, but I know our producer Roxy's planning some big publicity tour in the near future, so nothing's really set in stone just yet."   
"Fine, well, what do you know, this interview's over," Amber spoke breezily. Clearing her throat, she added, "All right, there's just one last thing I need you to do: The radio station's making all local artists record an anti-drug promo for the high school's D.A.R.E. program. Think you can grace 107.7 WHIP with your own, oh god of heavy metal?" Rikki darted a bored, disinterested glance at Amber, before a nasty glint suddenly went out in his darkly-colored eyes, as he sat up straighter--but only slightly--and sneered condescendingly, "Sure, I think I can do that, no prob." Amber looked uneasily at the sly expression on Rikki, muttered, "I *bleep*-ing hate my bosses," and sighed tiredly, "Okay, shoot. Just tell them who you are, which band you play for, improvise your message against alcohol and drug abuse, and plug a future club date or two. Got it?" Rikki smirked.   
"Got it." He cleared his throat, absently patted his headset, and began to speak. "All right, listen up you drunken horny assclowns out there, jacking off by listening to a crappy little metal station when you could be attending a live Ömega show at Valentino's--"   
Amber cut in, horrified.   
"Stop! What the hell are you doing?" she hissed furiously. "In case all your hairspray's made you too braindead to realize it, we're on the air live!"   
Rikki chuckled, for a moment looking almost boyish rather than the glammed out front man that he usually appeared, as he apologized, "All right, all right. I couldn't resist. Here, let me try that again."   
"Fine." Against her better judgment, Amber gave in grudgingly, as she apologized to her listeners, "I'm sorry, our guest was just kidding." She then motioned for Rikki to go ahead and cut his promo for D.A.R.E.   
"Hey, there, teens, Rikki Stixx of Ömega here," Rikki began, and a relieved Amber shot him the thumbs up sign. "Listen, I know that the phrase "Party like a rock star" probably isn't going to give me much credibility when talking to you on this subject, but for God's sake, listen to your parents and D.A.R.E. officers, and don't shoot up heroin! They'll leave messy, bloody needle marks all over your arms, and how can you expect to score looking like you've been attacked by a fat nurse armed with a jumbo hypodermic needle? Hey, there _is_ something called _snorting_ heroine and cocaine, ya know! Try _that,_ but for crying out loud, don't *bleep*-ing shoot up or any messed up *bleep*--"   
Amber looked like she wanted to clock him.   
"Rikki!" she wailed, and her ex-boyfriend grinned.   
"All right, all right," he laughed. "Here, I'll be good this time, I promise. Just give me one last chance." Amber turned away from him.   
"No," she huffed. "If you'll excuse me, I have to go and start playing some Bon Jovi to repair your damage, so just get the hell out of the studio before I sucker punch you!" Rikki didn't listen to her, and began his tirade again, this time shouting to be heard over the opening sequence of what Amber had mistaken for Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" but had actually turned out to be Warrant's "Cherry Pie".   
"Hey, the Crow here didn't let me finish--Ow! Quit whacking me with your clunker there--Hey, ow! I meant your clunky _shoe,_ not those other things!" Rikki whined. "Anyway, as I was saying, don't shoot up! And because your DJ is a scary *bleep*--Hey, ow! That's the truth, Crowley, and you know it! Anyway, don't snort either! Do something else! Hey, if you're not _too_ pimply and pathetic, maybe you can try doing the wild thing with the token virgin!" Unfortunately for Amber and the radio station, Rikki's already damaging words struck right before Warrant delved into its, "Well, she's my cherry pie..." chorus, and the statement came out seeming as if the station was actually advocating what Rikki was suggesting. Rikki himself, meanwhile, was smirking as he gloated, "See? Even the old Crow agrees with me--Hey, ow!" 

Fortunately, before a cat fight could break out in the 107.7 WHIP studios, another DJ poked her head into the room, a pale, petite brunette with orange streaked hair and dark brown eyes.   
"Hey, Amber, think you can wrap this sucker up already?" she called into the room. "It's time for me to kick off my Ladies of Metal hour with some Lita Ford and Vixen." Amber stopped clobbering Rikki over the head for calling her an old Crow, mumbling, "Oh, my. Has it been that long already?" Rikki, gingerly rubbing his head, glanced up warily to see the new speaker, and frowned in recognition.   
"Hey, I know you," he muttered. "You're that chick that Jericho used to date, aren't you?" The other girl groaned, slapping her forehead.   
"Ugh, did you have to go and remind me of how shallow I was?!" she complained, as Rikki was saying, "Your name is, according to Jericho anyway, Trish, Teri, Tina, Trini, Thalia, Tracy, Tara-Jade, Torrie, Tasha, Tawny, Tally, and/or Tiffany. But, then again, seeing how he's also the same guy who once thought Jethro Tull was the name of our manager, I'm assuming your name's something different?" The girl sighed.   
"Trina Joyce," she finally introduced herself. "I used to be the lead singer for the band, before I finally got a clue and realized I could get a job where everyone actually knows what my name is, and I'm not running the constant risk of my boyfriend stealing my red leather pants for a club date!" At her words, Amber turned around.   
"Tsk tsk, Trina," she scolded. Trina glared.   
"Hey, I was young and shallow, and Jericho looked just like a young version of David Lee Roth!" she defended herself. "Besides, you're one to talk, seeing how you actually went out with _Rikki_ of all people!"   
"All right, all right," Amber admitted grudgingly. "By the way, thanks for lending me that _Smart Women, Foolish Choices_ book by Hillary Clinton. It really helped me get over the fact that I actually went out with Rixx in the first place!"   
"No problem," Trina replied sweetly. "You know, I never thought I'd need a book like that, but then again, I'd never dated someone like Jericho before! I mean, before I thought the term "dumb blonde" applied only to girls, but I was dead wrong! We went out for two months, and in two months, he never _once_ got my name right!"   
"Hn, you think _that's_ bad?" Amber snorted. "Rikki stole my hairspray to do a photo shoot for a local magazine!"   
"Hon, that's just the tip of the iceberg to me," Trina told her. "Jericho stole my red leather pants for a club gig--and believe me, those pants are tight, which means they leave _nothing_ to the information, and you could just see this great big--"   
"Oh, God!" Rikki snapped. "I don't want to hear about t_hat!"_   
Trina ignored his outburst, as she rambled on.   
"Aw, shut up," she muttered, before ranting on, "And all I could think was, thank   
God he's hidden behind his drum kit, where no groupies can reach him. And lo and behold, Jericho has to spoil that as well, when he actually tried to teach Rikki some "stage moves", which were basically humping the air, humping the mic stand, and repeat the two steps in no particular order!"   
Amber laughed loudly.   
"Really?! I was wondering why good old Rixx over here was walking with a limp on the day I auditioned!" she snickered, as Rikki glared at her, but to no avail. Trina nodded, before chattering on.   
"Hey, now that I think about it, did you see that concert performance where Axl Rose took the stage in a friggin' kilt?" she giggled. Amber looked a bit surprised by this sudden change of topic.   
"And what does this have to do with humiliating our former boyfriends on the air?" she wanted to know. Trina had a nasty gleam in her eyes.   
"You'll see," she said mysteriously, so Amber shrugged, before replying, "I guess; man was that a hideous sight!"   
"You know what else is a hideous sight?" Trina gloated. "Rikki and Jericho taking the stage in uber-short kilts themselves!" Amber nearly fell off her chair.   
"No way!" she gasped, as Trina nodded enthusiastically.   
"See, they had both run out of leather pants, and the only items left were either normal clothing or these two kilts," she began gleefully. "Now, God forbid the two mighty gods of heavy metal take the stage looking like normal people...so guess what they opted for? Now, I don't have a picture with me, but I can describe in detail..." 

**Two Hours Later...**

"...So, there I was, two weeks after having quit the band and having paid eighteen bucks at Valentino's just to catch Ömega's first club date with their new Nikki Sixx lookalike lead singer," Trina was chattering happily. "And lo and behold, there are the only two males of the band, decked out in short kilts and scuba diving gear! You know, I honestly believe they were crazy enough to do the tube sock thing like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I guess since it had already been done, they decided to go with the kilts and the goggles!" Trina paused for a nanosecond to take a brief breath of air (she kind of had to, seeing how she was turning blue in the face), and then went on.   
"So, anyway, did I tell you about that one time..." she blabbed on, happily oblivious to the fact that a. Amber had long since fallen asleep from boredom, an unsightly line of drool coming from her mouth, and b. the only other person in the room, Rikki, was pulling a Toxic Twin in his mad effort to forget that this unexpected encounter with the two terrors in heels had ever happened. 

* * *

It was evening by the time Lance and Pietro returned to their apartment from their little visit to the set of Pop! Goes The Music Video, and the two teenybopper-terrorized guitarists were promptly greeted by the rather comical sight of an obviously drunk Rikki Stixx straddling the chainlink fence, giggling and hiccupping as he obnoxiously sang out the lyrics to "Cherry Pie" as loud as he possibly could. Lance eyed the heavy metal front man warily, before calling up, "Dude, what the hell are you doing humping the friggin' fence?!" Rikki stopped amidst a chorus of, "...sweet cherry pie," to peer down drunkenly at his fellow band mates, before hiccupping as he admitted, "I can't find the keys to the gate entrance, and I'm trying to get down!" Lance shook his head, muttering, "Great, and here I was hoping that you'd have the keys, since a certain someone lost them!" Pietro muttered defensively, "Hey, hey, hey, it ain't my fault! That valley girl would have grabbed my bloomers right out of my pants had I not been wearing a belt, and I had to sacrifice _something_ to the teenyboppers! It's a damn shame the keys had to be the first thing my hands came across!"   
"Look, never mind; it's obvious that Jericho and Morgan aren't returning anytime soon from their interview with that Lolita chick, so c'mon." And without another word, Lance leapt up and began scaling the fence. Pietro shrugged, before following suit. The two soon reached the top, gingerly dragged a drunken and giggling Rikki with them, and carefully climbed back down, with Rikki's half-assed version of "Cherry Pie" to serve as the soundtrack for their daring escapade. 

"Oops, I did it again."   
Lance and Pietro stopped in surprise, as Rikki abruptly stopped singing to cluck his tongue and chastise apparently himself, "Uh-oh, I guess I forgot the keys to the apartment itself as well. Oopsie."   
"Never mind, we'll just have to climb in through the window, then." Lance took charge, before Rikki could continue unwittingly spout out Britney Spears quotes. Rikki brightened up.   
"Yay, me first!" he squealed, and ran over to the nearest apartment wall and started to climb, as Pietro pouted and whined, "Hey, but _I_ wanted to be first!" Rikki scaled the wall, surprisingly quick for someone who was obviously drunk, followed by Pietro and then Lance. He reached the window he presumed led to Ömega's trashed apartment, and threw it wide open. Unfortunately for the three present members of the band, Rikki was way off, and the dark-haired lead singer soon found himself staring into the startled face of a wrinkled old woman who must have been at least ninety-years-old, wearing only a girdle and slip. Rikki's hands flew up to his eyes, as he wailed in horrified dismay, "Oh, my God! I'm blind!" at the same time that the old lady screeched out, "Why, these perverted big-haired hooligans!" Had he not been screaming, "My eyes!" in terrified wails, Rikki would have giggled out drunkenly, "Not just big hair!" As it stood, while Rikki was going on about how he would never see again (and with good reason, too!) and the fortunately-spared Pietro and Lance behind him were wondering what was going on, the old lady reached out and whacked Rikki squarely in the head with a conveniently handy frying pan. Fortunately, Rikki's big hair protected his head from most of the hit. Unfortunately, though, Rikki, who'd already been dangling precariously on the balcony with his hands laced protectively over his eyes, took that one clobber to the head and promptly fell off, smacking solidly against Pietro and Lance and taking his band mates with him. 

"Oof!" The three landed in a messy heap, Rikki on top and still wailing, "Wai! My eyes!"   
"Ugh. I guess we'd better wait for Morgan and Jericho to get back," Lance grunted from the bottom of the heap, underneath a still confused Pietro frantically screeching how his hair better not be mussed, and a terrified Rikki howling, "Oh, the horror!" 

* * *

*Next up, Lola Lolita attempts to interview Jericho and Morgan (I say _attempts to,_ because...well, you'll have to see! ^_^) 


	8. Chapter Seven: Irony And Stupidity Do No...

*Well, since FF.net won't allow authors to use the review system as an interactive form of message board and all that crap, I've decided to at the very least go ahead and finish at least Part I with the original characters that have already been submitted before the interactive ban was put into action (yeah, I'm good at finding loopholes and such ^_^). After all, it's really unfair to leave the readers hanging, especially after I'd rushed off to my computer to slave over this chapter after being inspired by watching the Guns N' Roses performance on the VMA's (and, by the way, how cool was that?! I had to sit through that 'NSYNC mophead's performance to catch it--actually, no I didn't, I flipped over to catch the last five minutes of a _Simpsons_ rerun, but I digress. Anyway, even though there was no Slash and Axl's voice wasn't exactly stellar, it was still all worth it! ^_^). So, without further ado, enjoy while I go and pray that FF.net doesn't delete my account over this! x_x 

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Irony And Stupidity Do Not Mix**

* * *

Jericho's blonde brows furrowed as he looked doubtfully at the long, shiny, psychedelic orange contraption that Morgan was squealing over, and muttered, "Hey, are you sure this...this double scooter thing works?" Morgan stopped dancing around the long, pumpkin-orange board on garish pink wheels and with twin red handlebars protruding from the front and middle, long enough to reply, "Sure it does! We just both get on, grab our respective handlebars, and start pushing forward with one foot on the sidewalk!" When Jericho still looked skeptical, the tiny purple-haired bassist pleaded, "Aw, c'mon, Jerky-Werky-Poo! Let's try it! Don't be such a spoilsport!" Jericho frowned, before grudgingly giving in.   
"Fine, fine," he relented, shrugging. "We'll try out this double scooter thing, so long as you stop calling me Jerky-Werky-Poo."   
"Okay, Jerky," Morgan replied cheekily, and happily hopped onto her place at the helm of the thing. Jericho pouted.   
"Hey, I wanted to be the one in the front!" he whined. "How am I supposed to pick up chicks if I'm riding behind a tiny little purple-haired shrimp like you?"   
"Well, how am I supposed to _see_ if I have to ride behind a big old guy like you?" Morgan pouted back. Jericho sighed, reluctantly giving in.   
"Fine, fine," he grumbled, as he grudgingly got onto the back of the double scooter behind the only female member of Ömega brave enough to have stuck with the band. The two started to propel themselves forward, heading toward the coffee shop where they were supposed to carry out their interview with some reporter named Lola Lolita (or, according to Jericho, Lulu What'sHerFace). 

Unfortunately for the two band mates, however, they had gotten a total of eight feet forward, before a bottled blonde schoolgirl crammed into a pretty pink minidress had spotted them and squealed, "Hey, look! It's, like, that total hunkasaurus from, like, the "Panama" video that they were, like, totally playing on MTV last night!" One of her companions, a pixie valley girl with dyed pink ponytails, replied, "You mean, like, David Lee Roth? Ew, he's, like, a thousand years old now!" The blonde bimbo replied impatiently, "No, like, not that Van Halen thingie! I mean the, like, newer video, by that band with, like, the totally hot drummer who's never, like, wearing a shirt! Like, Ömega!" At that, her pink-haired friend squealed, "Eee! Like, no way!" And before the happily pedaling Morgan and Jericho had realized what was happening, a swarm of teenyboppers had gathered from God only knew where, and started to stampede after the hapless duo. Jericho peeked back, and gulped.   
"Oh, crikey!" he cursed, then suddenly stopped. "Hey, cool, I can do an Aussie accent!" While Jericho gloated about his newly-found Australian roots, Morgan chirped cheerfully, "What's wrong?" That brought Jericho back to Earth, as he glanced back at the rapidly approaching herd of teenyboppers, and swore.   
"Crap! There's a hoard of screaming schoolgirls after us!" he wailed. Morgan tried to look back to see what the handsome blonde drummer was talking about, but due to the fact that she was a good three or four inches short of even five feet, it was rather hard for her to see around a toned, well-muscled six-footer, so she had to take Jericho's word for it.   
"Go faster!" Morgan shrieked, and the two started pushing forward as fast as they could. Unfortunately for Morgan (yet again!), she found out too late that Jericho had played soccer in his high school years, and was thus very familiar with increasing one's speed to suit the situation, while she herself was far too tiny to keep up with him.   
"Eeeek!" Morgan shrieked, as she promptly fell off the double scooter thingie, while the clueless Jericho kept on riding on, unaware that his band mate had fallen off and intent on ditching the teenyboppers.   
"Jerky!" Morgan wailed. Fortunately for her this time, Jericho had good enough hearing and just enough of a conscience to jump off the swiftly moving double scooter and run back to snatch Morgan up. Glancing back at the steadily approaching swarm of teenyboppers, Jericho cursed, before grabbing Morgan's tiny wrist and sprinting off. Unfortunately for Morgan, though, she was barely four foot eight, whereas Jericho stood a good five inches above six feet. Therefore, as Jericho ran like a madman from the teenyboppers, Morgan flew--literally--a good two feet off the ground as the drummer dragged her along with him.   
"Whee! I'm flying like the majestic bald beagle!" the purple-haired bassist squealed in delight. 

* * *

Lola Lolita examined her reflection in the mirror, satisfied with what she saw. Despite the fact that she was already twenty-four years old, most of her colleagues at the magazine seemed to think that she was a valley girl ditz who always found a way to screw up her assignments, and it had nothing to do with her poofy sprayed hair or the fact that she stood at barely an inch over five feet. Lola frowned. She'd show them, those snotty, stuck in the past, holier-than-thou journalists who seemed to think that any band to have come out of the L.A. club scene was crap, and the record industry had stopped producing good albums after the classic-rock era of the seventies. She'd show them, by running the biggest, bestest cover story ever, on a heavy metal band that fit the mold of the exact type that her colleagues hated: crass, loud, and obnoxious, storming up the charts from the New York underground rock scene with screeching guitar licks and amps that went to a minimum of eleven. Ömega. Lola frowned. She'd never interviewed a band with Ömega's hard-drinking and harder-partying reputation--her boss had always handed the nicer, softer bands to her--and since she didn't really listen to heavy metal or hard rock, she'd been forced to rent out tapes of live concerts to adequately prepare for the biggest story of her career. Unfortunately, however, metal bands seemed split down the middle when it came to concert crowds: there were the busty, bottle-blonde Poison groupies on one side of the camp, and the greasy-haired, drunken, dominantly male maniac metalheads who proudly wore their tattered Anthrax T-shirts on a daily basis. Lola had fretted over her dilemma, before deciding to merge the two camps into one. However, since the only interviews she'd been assigned to previously were pop stars, she had no real street credentials when it came to the underground hard rock scene, let alone any clue whatsoever as to how fans dressed. So, she'd decided to improvise with what she had, and in the end, she'd wound up plastering a giant blow-up picture of Dave Mustaine over a pastel pink Christina Aguilera T-shirt, donned a giant Jennifer Lopez-esque hat colored in Poison green and with the words Gums & Rosses glued sloppily onto the brim, and spent a fortune on a pair of white leather pants that Axl Rose _might_ have worn during the "Paradise City" music video. Lola spared one last look to the mirror, satisfied with what she saw, before squaring her shoulders and going off to battle, armed with her trusty handheld recording device. 

* * *

Jericho literally ran over an eight-year-old girl on Rollerblades, dragging Morgan with him as he made a mad break for anywhere that could provide some sort of refuge from the teenyboppers. He finally screeched to a halt inside an alley, panting and gasping for breath, while Morgan giggled, "Yay, that was fun!" and the flock of teenyboppers ran right past them, thankfully not one of them having noticed the two hiding out inside. Jericho paused to take a breath, before murmuring in relief, "Phew, glad that's over." 

At that moment, a tiny little woman--barely a couple of inches taller than Morgan (which was saying something!)--approached the two.   
"Scuse me, my name's Lola Lolita, and I'm--" she started to say. Jericho's eyes bugged out, as he noted the giant green hat, hot pink shirt with a picture of some blonde pasted on the front, and hideous white pants. _Teenybopper! _his brain screamed in alarm, all the while not realizing that the blurry blonde was actually former Megadeth front man Dave Mustaine, and not Britney Spears on a bad hair day.   
"Run!" Jericho hollered, and took off. Morgan, who'd been busy pointing at the little Lolita and giggling, "Hey, cool, you're just as short as I am!" noticed that Jericho had run off and whined, "Hey, quit ditching me, Jerky!" before taking off after him. Lola blinked dazedly, wondering whether her metalhead costume was so hideous as to have frightened off someone who'd actually worn purple leather pants with tassels on a club date, and dashed after the duo, waving her handheld recorder and wailing, "Hey, wait! Don't run away! I don't bite!" 

**Five Minutes Later...**

Morgan buckled herself into the passenger's seat, then glanced back at the frantically running Lola as Jericho revved the engine. Sinking back into her seat, she sighed comfortably, "Aw, that was so nice of that officer to lend us his car while he wasn't looking." Jericho drove on, speeding recklessly in his hijacked cruiser and nearly crashing into everything he possibly could as he nodded at Morgan's comments.   
"Yeah. I must say though, he was pretty dumb to have actually believed we worked for the FBI!" he crowed, then nearly crashed right into a lamp post as he turned around to exchange what was actually a low five to him with Morgan. Apparently, the two Ömega band mates seemed to think that jumping an officer from behind while he was busy slapping a ticket on a hapless speeding teen, and then shoving an empty wallet into his face while shouting, "Jericho Locklear--FBI!" before jumping into his police cruiser and driving off in a great cloud of exhaust fumes was the same as borrowing. Just then, the petty criminal who'd been arrested and locked into the backseat woke up from his slumber, and slurred, "Hey, man, can you pull over?" 

**Five More Minutes Later...**

"Eeeeeewwww!" Morgan shrieked, and the startled Jericho nearly hit the roof of the car upon hearing her high-pitched whine.   
"What?" he asked frantically, taking his hands off the wheel as he turned around and causing a startled blue Nissan to swerve out of his way. Morgan held her nose, waving her tiny hands in front of her face as she whined, "Pee ew! That guy just threw up all over the backseat!" 

**Ten Minutes After That...**

"...Ready?" Jericho asked. Morgan nodded tensely, tightening her hands into tiny little fists until her knuckles turned white.   
"One, two, three...Jump!" Jericho shouted, and the two simultaneously opened their car doors and dove out of the moving cruiser, leaving their drunken, barfing petty criminal of a back seat passenger behind as they made a break for it in moving traffic.   
"Jerónimo!" Morgan shrieked as she jumped. Jericho made his escape silently...and promptly wound up tackling a, um, big-boned fifty-year-old pedestrian who happened to be crossing the street hauling a bag of jelly-filled doughnuts.   
"Ick! My hair!" Jericho wailed, desperately pulling at his sticky, jelly-covered golden locks. 

Just then, a vaguely familiar face peered into Jericho's, as its owner sang out, "Are you all right?" Jericho leaned back, and his eyes widened when he recognized the speaker as the pink-green-and-white-clad little teenybopper who'd called herself Lolita.   
"Hey, it's that teenybopper girl from the alley," Morgan chirped up brightly, at the same time that Lola drew back in surprise and sputtered, "But I'm not a teenybopper..." Jericho, by then, had recovered from the trauma of his hair emergency, and had already grabbed Morgan's hand and shouted, "Run!" with Lola sputtering after them, "Hey, I'm just as hard-rocking as the next guy!" She then proceeded to point to the next guy she saw...who just happened to be skipping along wearing a pastel pink Backstreet Boys T-shirt and crooning, "Show me the meaning of being lonely!" By then, Jericho and Morgan had long since disappeared, chasing after their discarded hijacked police cruiser. 

**At the coffee shop...**

"Ooh, ooh! I want an espresso!" Morgan chirped.   
"Don't listen to her," Jericho quickly informed the waitress. "She doesn't need to be any more hyper than she already is. She'll take a nice glass of seltzer."   
Just then, Lola popped up from behind.   
"All right, let's start this interview by telling me the names of all five band members..."   
Jericho and Morgan were out the door before she could finish her sentence. 

**On a second hijacked police car...**

"Gee, I wonder when that reporter lady's gonna show up," Morgan wondered out loud. "She's way late for the interview."   
Lola ironically peeked over from the back seat.   
"Hey, is it true that your new guitarists have been bouncing in and out of the detox center like proverbial yo-yos?" she chirped brightly. Five seconds later, Lola let out an insulted grunt of, "Oof!" as she clutched her butt, shaking her fist and glaring after the moving cruiser as she hollered, "You can throw me out as often as you like, but you'll never get rid of me! I'm harder to peel off than Seran wrap! Mwahahah!" 

**At the park...**

Jericho and Morgan, decked out in identical beige trench coats, Fedora hats, and fake nose-eyeglasses-and-mustache disguises, peered up from their newspapers. Seeing no dazed teenybopper in sight, Jericho began to relax.   
"Phew. I guess we finally ditched her," he breathed. Just then, a third trench-coat-and-Fedora-hat-clad figure who'd been sitting on the park bench beside theirs, leaned over, took off her hat and shades to reveal her true identity, and trilled, "So, can you share any hair-care tips with our readers, Locklear?"   
"Run!" Morgan wailed. 

**At the punk shop...**

Jericho shifted uncomfortably under the tremendous load of clothing and accessories, as Morgan happily worked her way through the entire store, throwing even more merchandise into the hapless drummer's arms every other minute. Jericho grunted, before whining, "This is boring! I wanna go home now!"   
"Oh, you be quiet, Jerky," Morgan chirped cheerfully, casually throwing a thrift store tee bearing England's Union Jack front and back onto Jericho's head. As Jericho sulked and pouted, the tiny bassist added, "Now you've got an idea how long it takes to shop for all our stage attire, Jerky!" Just then, one of the store's "sales clerks" popped up and sang out, "So, your name's Jericho Locklear! Any relationship to Heather Locklear?" Jericho, unable to see too well with the Union Jack tee tangled in his precious hair, grunted cluelessly, "Huh? Who's Helen Lockhart?" Morgan, busy examining a pair of leather pants small enough to fit her, sang out nonchalantly, "Oh, that's the blonde actress who married that rock star guy." Jericho lit up.   
"Oh, you mean that _Baywatch_ hooter that Bret Michaels and Tommy Lee got to boink around on camera?" he asked innocently.   
"No, Heather Locklear's the non-skank who married Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi," the "clerk" who'd asked the question prodded. Jericho shrugged.   
"Naw, we ain't related," he told her. "We must be like Eddie and Alex Van Halen--you know, they have the same last names, but they're not related at all!"   
"D'oah!" The "clerk" looked like she wanted to smack her forehead for his stupidity. Just then, Jericho finally managed to toss the Union Jack tee off his head and onto his lap, and finally got a good look at the "clerk" who'd asked him that question about...what was it again? Oh, yeah, the Brothers Van Halen! Jericho scrunched up his perfect nose. Although, if they _weren't_ related, then how come they looked so much alike, and everybody called them the _Brothers_ Van Halen? Hmm, maybe they _were_ related after all, like Joe Perry and Joe Piscopo...Fortunately for the spaced-out Jericho, Morgan turned around at that moment, and finally got a glance of the "clerk" who'd asked them the question.   
"Wai! It's that crazy teenybopper stalker chick!" she wailed, and quickly pulled Jericho out of the shop while the "crazy teenybopper stalker chick" was busy writing down Jericho's quote about how he and Heather Locklear were just like Alex and Eddie Van Halen. 

**At the gas station...**

Lola observed the duo of Jericho and Morgan stealthily creep into the convenience store, and grinned victoriously.   
"Gotcha!" she gloated, and crept in after them. Throwing open the swinging glass doors wide open, she shouted, "All right, Ömega, spill the dirt, and spill it now!" Her eyes widened, as she noticed all the tough biker-types glowering down at her and her silly teenybopper attire, and she eeped.   
"Uh-oh..."   
Meanwhile, Jericho and Morgan not-so-discreetly snuck out via the bathroom windows. Jericho, lodged halfway out and with his long legs dangling from the inside, grunted, "Ouch, Morgan, quit poking my butt already! It's not gonna help get me out any faster, 'kay?"   
Five minutes later, after Jericho and Morgan had this time hailed a taxi rather than going for the usual hijacking a police car routine, a black-and-blue Lola stumbled out of the convenience store, gingerly rubbing one of the numerous bumps and bruises on her head.   
"Ouchy..." she whined, tottering dazedly about. 

* * *

Jericho and Morgan arrived in front of their apartment, with the latter whining, "I can't believe Lola Lolita promised us an interview, and then never showed up! How rude!" Jericho grimaced, plucking at his hair.   
"I know," he agreed. "Between that Lulie reporter chick snubbing us, that wacky teenybopper who kept on chasing after us, and all the damage done to my gorgeous hair, I am ready to just go straight to bed and try to forget this day ever happened!" The two unlocked the fence surrounding the apartment complex and proceeded to enter...then stopped dead in their tracks when they found the human heap collapsed in front of a building. Tangled on top was Rikki Stixx, flailing feebly about as he clutched at his eyes and wailed, "My eyes! My eyes!" Apparently, he'd witnessed a highly horrific sight very recently. Underneath the flailing Rikki, Pietro Maximoff was whining, "My hair! My hair!" terrified that his precious platinum locks had been damaged somehow in the fall. And finally, lodged at the bottom of the heap, was the highly unfortunate Lance Alvers, who grunted painfully, "My spine! My spine!" Morgan's eyes lit up, and she squealed, "Ooh, this game looks like so much fun; lemme play!" She then cleared her throat, and proceeded to shriek at the top of her lungs, "My piercings! My piercings!" Suddenly, Jericho, who'd been staring dumbfounded at the human heap before, gasped out, "My gum! My gum!" Morgan stopped screeching about her piercings long enough to turn around and chirp brightly, "Oh, so you've decided to join in too, huh?" Jericho shook his head adamantly.   
"No!" he replied emphatically. He then whined, "I swallowed my gum!" 

Fortunately, at that moment, Roxy and Jennifer returned from their promotional meetings with radio stations (actually, Jennifer had simply sat back and watched while Roxy bullied, sweet-talked, and manipulated the DJ's into playing Ömega's first single off of their upcoming debut album). The two women drove up in the rental car Roxy had obtained while she waited for her trashed SUV to be repaired, and found the five members of Ömega acting like the motley crew of screwballs that they were. Jennifer got out, staring boggle-eyed at the band, while Roxy removed her silver shades and surveyed the scene with calm almond eyes. She strode confidently past the band, heading to retrieve the mail, while Jennifer reluctantly rolled up her sleeves and went to work, pulling Rikki off of Pietro and Lance first. She guided the dazed band into their trashed apartment, and filled up a kettle of water to be boiled for tea in an effort to calm them down, as she inquired, "So...what happened?"   
"Our reporter never showed up," Morgan huffed first, obviously insulted as she crossed her arms and legs and kicked her feet about. 

Before anybody else could speak up, Roxy returned from where she'd retrieved that day's mail, calling out, "Hey, looks like Lance and Pietro's cover shot to be used in next month's issue of that local guitar magazine has arrived!" Jennifer stood up, eager to get a peek.   
"Let me see," she requested, to which Roxy quickly whipped the envelope behind her back.   
"Uh...I really don't think you want to," she muttered. Jennifer's heart sank, before she turned around to fix a stern look on Lance and Pietro, still going on about their bad hair and bad back.   
"What did you do now?" she grilled, to which the Toxic Twins shot back clueless looks.   
"Huh?" they wanted to know.   
"The magazine cover!" Jennifer prodded. "What did you do to screw that one up?"   
Lance shrugged.   
"I don't know," he muttered, at the same time that Pietro chirped innocently, "We don't remember.   
"We got lost on the way to the shoot," Lance added, "and since Pietro broke the electronic map in Roxy's SUV by using it to try to spam some loser kid called Evan Daniels, we had to stop for directions at some liquor store."   
"Oh, no," Jennifer groaned, as Pietro added cheekily, "Yeah, and how can you _not_ buy as much strawberry daiquiri as you can afford with all the money you could find in Roxy's SUV?" Lance grinned.   
"Yeah. Guess we kind of got carried away. The next thing we knew, Roxy had dragged us painfully up from our hangover/sugar high-induced coma for hijacking her precious Benz," he chirped cheekily. Jennifer swallowed hard, as she braced herself for the worst and reached over to take the magazine from Roxy. The pretty brunette manager needed take only one good look, before her mouth dropped wide open and she nearly hit the roof.   
"You...you...you..." she sputtered, her face red as she waved the glossy magazine wildly about. The others found out what had set her off soon enough, as they finally got a peek of the infamous magazine cover. Gracing the glossy page, splashed in full color underneath the guitar magazine's name, was a full-frontal cover depicting Lance and Pietro in all their naked glory--literally. The two self-proclaimed guitar gods, obviously drunk out of their minds and grinning goofily into the camera, were posing like rock stars for the magazine cover, wearing absolutely nothing except their guitars, which were hanging too low anyway and just barely squeezed by to make the picture non-pornographic.   
"Naughty, naughty, naughty," Morgan clucked, as Jericho shrugged, completely unfazed as he took a calm sip of his beer, while Rikki grimaced and averted his eyes, whining, "Oh, God! As if that thousand-year-old woman wasn't bad enough! I didn't want to see _this!"_   
"You're naked!" Jennifer finally shrieked in dismay, absolutely horrified. Lance and Pietro looked defensive, as Pietro grouchily defended himself, "Hey, they told us to be natural! So...we did!" while Lance gave a silly laugh and quipped, "Yeah, this is as natural as you can get!" Meanwhile, as Jennifer struggled to keep herself from having a mental breakdown and/or a heart attack, Roxy was already busy on the phone.   
"Hi, is this the editor for _Playgirl_ magazine?" she was saying. After a brief pause, she began her sales pitch. "Yes, hi, this is Roxy Oyama of Red Zeppelin Records...I was wondering, would your magazine be interested in cutting a deal for a photo spread of two up-and-coming rock & roll guitarists?" 

* * *

Will Jennifer have a mental breakdown? Will Lola Lolita get back at Jericho and Morgan for setting her up at the gas station? Will Roxy's proposal for a _Playgirl_ spread of Lance and Pietro go through? Will I ever shut up? -_- Huh, I can answer that last question... 


	9. Chapter Eight: Terror Twins For The Toxi...

*I'm back! Mwahahahahahah! Didya miss me? Didya? Didya?! Neways, sorry for having been gone for so long, it's the whole back to school crap and everything, and I spent the better half of last week being a. hopelessly lost around the bigass campus, and b. slaving over all the homework assignments and annoying projects that all the Evil Dictators--um, I mean, my professors--seemed to think would be so ingenious to dump onto their poor students before the first week of school is over! Bleh! But anyway, I'm back now, and we'll begin the celebration by putting the Toxic Twins through the Date From Hell (cue evil cackles here) followed by some ice cream cake or sumthin'! ^_^ 

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Terror Twins For The Toxic Twins**

* * *

Jennifer casually brushed away a strand of honey-colored hair as she played around with the white telephone cord, listening to the woman chatter away on the other end of the line. She sighed, before saying in an obviously forced polite voice, "Well, you see, the reason I wasn't in the "Panama" video was because I'm the manager. Usually, when a band releases a music video, said music video will feature only the band members. It had nothing to do with whether or not I'd gained too much weight to look cute enough on camera--which I hadn't!" A pause, as the caller presumably said something else, before Jennifer impatiently blew away a piece of hair that had fallen into her sky-blue eyes and added, "Well, you see, the busty "fangirls" trying to give the band members lap dances were actually strippers that our producer Roxy Oyama hired for eye candy, so it really wouldn't have been appropriate for me to have had my breasts popping out of a tiny little hot pink tube top while I tried to hump the lead singer." Another pause, before Jennifer cut into the caller's tirade to point out, "Yes, I realize that it would have gotten my face on camera, but that is just a very inappropriate way for me to--" The caller cut her off in order to chastise her some more for not having weaseled her way into the "Panama" music video, while Jennifer shrugged and nodded, mumbling a half-hearted, "Uh huh," every now and then. Finally, the caller switched to another subject, and Jennifer's eyebrows nearly flew off her forehead when she got the news. A look of dismay crept into her eyes, as she protested, "My sisters? Here? Tomorrow? But Mum--" While Jennifer rattled on, Pietro's eyebrows raised in amusement at something the distraught manager had said that he'd apparently found funny, and the silver-haired rhythm guitarist leaned over to share his little joke with Lance. The older, dark-haired half of the Toxic Twins promptly shook his head in amusement, his upper lip twisting up in a smug little sneer as he took a sip of beer while the very all-American Jennifer finished her conversation with her "Mum". As soon as the brunette manager had hung up, having been suckered into letting her two sisters drop by for a visit later on that week, Lance and Pietro gave each other knowing smirks, attracting said manager's attentions. Jennifer turned around, crossing her arms over her chest as she turned to look first at Lance, then at Pietro.   
"All right, what is it?" she demanded crossly. "What's so funny now?"   
Lance and Pietro exchanged amused little sneers, before Pietro snickered in a nasal, snobbish, and very badly-imitated British accent, "Aye, look 'ere matey, it seems as if darling Jennifer's a good ole English lass." Jennifer frowned, as Pietro and Lance exchanged high fives, before muttering tight-lipped, "My mother insists that I call her "Mum"; she says it makes her feel classier and more sophisticated than all her old high school white trailer trash best friends from Jebediah County, Arkansas."   
"Whatever you say, luv," Lance snickered, in an equally hideous British accent. Jennifer frowned again, tucking a strand of chestnut-brown hair behind her ear as she began, "Speaking of no-good white trailer trash Southerners...my, uh, two sisters have decided to drop by for an impromptu visit tomorrow."   
"Hey, cool, genuine, real-life hillbillies!" Morgan squealed excitedly, while Rikki snorted rudely, "Hn. You don't look like a toothless redneck to me; who'd have thought _you_ came from a trailer park?"   
"My sisters are _not_ hillbillies, they speak perfectly fine English, with no hick accents or whatever," Jennifer spoke up hastily, then added while darting Rikki a dirty look, "And the Falls family is not a clan of inter-breeding rednecks, or hillbillies, or hicks, or trailer trash, or whatever; my Mum just happens to have been raised in Jebediah County, Arkansas, that's all!"   
"Hey, that's okay, I believe you," Jericho spoke up pleasantly. "I mean, my dad was raised in the South himself, so I tend to get that kind of stereotype flak from some people when they hear where my parents come from." Jennifer turned to him gratefully.   
"Really? That's so nice to know that someone else understands where you're coming from," she acknowledged thankfully. Jericho nodded enthusiastically, to the point where he appeared to be headbanging.   
"Yup," he said wisely. "Say, is Southern California anywhere near Jebediah County? I mean, since the stereotypes that _I_ got was dumb blonde surfer dude and not toothless redneck, I figured we might come from different parts of Arkansas!"   
"D'oah!" 

* * *

Meanwhile, cue over to a nice, neat ranch-style house in the suburbs outside of New York City, where two teenage girls where busy sitting in front of a huge mirror, rigorously applying makeup. The taller one, Jennifer's fraternal twin sister and a busty brunette with cat-like green eyes and a flawless complexion, was chattering, "Ugh, I really hope there are some cute guys in the city. All the boys here are just so...blah!" Nineteen-year-old Jamie Falls critically examined her dyed sun-gold hair (which she had bleached to quote, look hotter), before leaning forward to the mirror to put in her brown contact lenses (again, to "look hotter") and reassuring her sister, "Don't worry, Cali, I'm sure they're good-looking. Remember what Jenny told us: a six-foot-five blonde, a moody model front man, and two sweetheart guitarists. How can you go wrong with a bunch of like that?" Cali arched her eyebrows.   
"Huh, sexy rock stars, really?" A bird-that-ate-the-canary grin suddenly appeared on her features. "In that case, I better pack my extra low-cut red minidress...but only because it's my favorite first-date dress, that's all, and not because I want to skank around and catch the attentions of hot guys, or anything," she added quickly. Jamie had paused, hot pink lipstick aimed halfway at her mouth, as her sister's words sank you.   
"You've got a point; I'd better pack my extra low-rise strategically ripped pink leather pants," she said thoughtfully. "But only because they're my favorite pair of pants, and not because I want to, um...what's that word that I can't pronounce again? Oh, yeah, and not because I want to, um, seduct some cute guy or anything!"   
"Jamie, that's not seduct," Cali clucked, shaking her head. "The word you want is to reduce a cute guy!" Jamie shrugged.   
"Yeah, whatever," she mumbled. "But like you said, only because my extra low-rise strategically ripped pink leather pants are, like, my favorite pair of pants, and not because I want to, erm, show off my assets. That would be like, so totally...what's that word again, that I can't pronounce? Oh, yeah, um, that would be, like, so totally biodegradable to women!"   
"Jamie, it's not biodegradable," Cali chided smartly. "It's dehydrating!" Jamie swatted her hands carelessly back and forth, as she reached into her jam-packed closet to retrieve her special T-shirt, the one with the signatures of all the cute guys she'd ever stalked and had never washed since entering the eighth grade.   
"Oh, whatever, you smarty-pants," she scoffed. 

* * *

Jennifer switched off her cell phone, looking worried. Since Roxy was busy out peddling Lance and Pietro's magazine centerfold--um, I mean, magazine _cover--_and Jennifer herself would be busy the next day going to meetings all day with record label execs, she would need to leave someone responsible and logical to take care of her sisters when they arrived on the three o' clock train the next day. But who...? She frowned. Cali and Jamie Falls had made it clear over the cell phone that they wanted two, like, totally hot guys (like, duh!), meaning Mini-Me Morgan was out of the question, which was probably a relief in itself. That left either Bachelor Number One, Rikki Stixx with his Aqua Net hairspray and asshole attitude, Bachelor Number Two, Jericho Locklea as the charming, handsome blonde with less brain cells than probably even Jamie (which was a scary thought in itself!), and, of course, Bachelors Numbers Three and Four, Lance Alvers and Pietro Maximoff, a.k.a. the sweetheart guitarists when sober, a.k.a. the obnoxious Toxic Twins when not so, um, sober. Jennifer sighed, tiredly running a hand through her chestnut-brown hair. Between Rikki, who'd probably get annoyed with her sisters five minutes into the date and dump them in some dark alley to go bar-hopping and groupie-smooching alone, and Jericho, who would probably get lost five minutes into the "date" and end up taking her sisters on a hitchhiking "adventure" to some place like Guadalajara, it appeared as if the Toxic Twins were the safest alternatives. What could be the worst thing that would happen? So they'd get drunk and act like a couple of silly, obnoxious little assclowns. That was still far better than a. Rikki ditching her sisters at the skid row district or b. Jericho getting hopelessly lost and somehow wind up taking her sisters to Mexico. Besides, her two bimbo sisters would probably think the whole Toxic Twin routine was, "like, totally hot", and anyway, Lance and Pietro still needed some sort of punishment for their full-frontal magazine cover. A sly, evil smile graced Jennifer's face, as she turned to the living room and called out in a sing-song voice, "Oh, Lance, Pietro...you'll never guess what I've got planned for you two!" 

* * *

Pietro gingerly peeled off his waist some fat, unwashed, dirty-blonde hillbilly who'd latched herself onto him, before turning to Lance and whining, "How did we get suckered into picking up the Falls sisters at the train station, anyway? The only people arriving are toothless rednecks who seem to think that I look just like their brother, and thus ought to get hitched off right away and breed our youngins in Dumpwater, Wisconsin!" Lance, meanwhile, busy fighting off a herd of blonde, braided, bucktoothed triplets in matching pink dresses and tattered old straw hats, grunted, "Look, how should I know how the hell we ever got suckered into taking out a pair of giggly airheads, except that Roxy's bossy bitchy attitude seems to have rubbed off on Geri-Ann!" Pietro scowled, finally rid of the toothless fat dirty-blonde, before correcting, "Well then, if that's the case, then Jericho's clueless airhead attitude seems to have rubbed off on _you, _cause her name is Jennifer."   
"Whatever!" Lance snapped grumpily, still trying desperately to avoid being humped and pinched by the triple threat blondes from Dumpwater, Wisconsin. 

At that moment, the three o' clock train arrived, whistling and screeching to a hasty stop. The doors were slammed wide open, and passengers began shoving and fighting each other to be the first ones to get out, in typical New York City fashion. Lance and Pietro, still busy trying to shake off the cargo of rednecks from the two-fifteen Wisconsin train, didn't notice the pair of non-hillbillies until the two girls were practically standing right in front of them. The shorter one, a skinny little bottled blonde, peered into Pietro's face and stared wide-eyed, until her brown-tinted contacts nearly fell out, before shrieking happily, "So, like, are you one of those two cute sweetheart guitarists that Jennifer said would be taking us out on dates?!" Pietro gave a startled little squawk, and promptly fell backwards, landing right into the arms of the waiting fat dirty-blonde who was waiting to haul him off to raise their youngins in Dumpwater, Wisconsin. Upon quickly untangling himself from the toothless redneck, he mumbled, "Uh...you two must be Jennifer's sisters." By then, Lance had also finally disentangled himself from the triple threat from Dumpwater, as the slender blonde chirped happily, "That's right! My name's Jamaica Victoria Priscilla La Toya Bobbie-Jean Rochelle Marianna Susanna Falls--but you can call me Jamie." Just then, the other half of the Falls sisters, a green-eyed brunette with her ample breasts nearly popping right out of the low-cut red minidress she was wearing, proceeded to introduce herself.   
"And my name is California Summer Tallahassee Sunshine Daydream Dawn-Marie Catalina Chae-An Falls--but feel free to call me Cali," the busty brunette added. And then, in unison, the two sisters held out their arms to be linked, and chirped as one, "Shall we go?" Lance tee heed nervously, before excusing himself and Pietro, "Eh heh...one moment, please?" And he quickly pulled the startled silver-haired rhythm guitarist well out of earshot of the two Falls sisters.   
"All right," Lance hissed, "what do we do?" Pietro, meanwhile, was studying the two girls critically through narrowed ice-blue eyes.   
"Well," he finally spoke, "I'll go with the California girl, and you can take the chick named after Elvis's wife."   
"No, not that--Hey! Wait a minute, why do _I_ have to take the blonde bimbo?" Lance protested. "If anybody should take the skinny little bottled blonde, it's you. After all, in case you haven't noticed, the lesser of the two evils--California What'sHerFace--is a good couple of inches taller than you!"   
"Fine, fine, whatever!" Pietro snapped grouchily. "Let's just get this dating crap over with so that we can go join Rikki and Jericho at the Girls! Girls! Girls! bar and start ordering margaritas with Roxy's platinum card!"   
"All right, then." Lance cleared his throat and straightened out the black dress jacket Jennifer had forced him to wear, before preparing to go off to battle--um, that is, take out Jennifer's so very lovely sisters. 

Jamie and Cali, who had both crowded in front of a broken mirror and were adjusting their tops while Lance and Pietro were trying to think up the best strategy for speedy dating, quickly whirled around as one to face their dates for the evening.   
"So...shall we go?" Cali giggled, pouting her full red lips seductively. Lance linked arms with his "date", and glared over at Pietro to mimic his action.   
"Sure, why not, your sister gave us two hundred bucks to spend on this date, so we might as well hurry up and max out her credit card before nightfall," Lance muttered. Pietro, busy batting away Jamie's hands as she giggled and pulled on his precious silver locks and wondered out loud what kind of bleach he used, harrumphed, "All right, so...where do you lovely ladies want to go first?" Cali peered her cat-like green eyes upwards to bat her eyelashes sultrily, before giving a silvery laugh as she suggested, "Oh, well, since we are in the big city and all...how about taking us to the finest restaurant in town?" Lance lit up, thankful that they were wandering into familiar territory.   
"In that case, follow us!" He shot a mischievous wink to Pietro, who caught on and added enthusiastically, "Yeah, we know a place where you can get the best food and entertainment, all in one sitting!" 

* * *

"Uh..." Cali paused to stare wide-eyed at all the Hooters girls bouncing around, carrying trays of cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes. "This wasn't exactly what we had in mind when we said finest restaurant in town."   
"Yeah," Jamie chirped from where she was, staring intently into a mirror as she applied a fresh coat of peach lipstick onto her old hot pink layer. "We were thinking of something more like, you know, C.C.'s Fish Tacos & Margaritas." Cali nodded wisely.   
"Mmm hmm," she agreed, as Pietro shrugged and scratched his head.   
"Well gee, if you wanted tacos and margaritas, you should have just said so," he mumbled, at the same time that Lance spoke up breezily, "Oh, if you want fish, I'm sure you can get it here. I mean, is there anything that Hooters doesn't serve?"   
"Well," Cali muttered, emerald green eyes flashing as she glared at one of the busty Hooters girls "entertaining" a patron, "even if seafood isn't on their menu, it's pretty obvious that a lap dance is!"_ Uh oh,_ Lance thought frantically, _she's gonna pick a catfight with that hooter! Better do something--fast!_ Turning around so fast he nearly slipped on the tiled floor, Lance took a deep breath and prepared to unleash his secret weapon.   
"Aw, c'mon love," he pouted, flashing her his most winning boyish smile. "Won't you please put up with this for an hour or so? We'll make it up to you later on in the date...promise." He could already see she was softening.   
"All right, fine," Cali finally conceded reluctantly. "We'll eat at Hooters--if you promise to take us out to a really sophisticated and glamorous spot after this."   
"That's the spirit, Carrie," Lance said encouragingly. Cali flashed him a venomous glare.   
"My name's Cali," she hissed. She then frowned. "Well, actually, its California Summer Tallahassee Sunshine Daydream Jamaica--oh, no wait, that's Jamie's name! Great, now I've got start all over again! Ahem. My name is California Summer Tallahassee Sunshine Daydream...um, oh, yeah! Dawn-Marie, and then there's a Catalina, and a Chae An..." Lance was already long gone as Cali stood there rattling off her many names, having skipped off to flirt with a sultry Hooters girl with wavy dark chestnut hair and an exotic Spanish señorita appeal. 

Cali finally seemed to have taken notice that her cute sweetheart rock guitarist beau had long since lost interest in her, and huffed, stalking over to Lance and his exotic señorita and hauling him off by the ear.   
"Owieowieowie!" Lance whined, as Cali dragged him toward the narrow booth that Pietro and Jamie were already squeezed into. As Lance grudgingly sat down across from the two beside Cali, Pietro leaned over the table confidentially and whispered, "Is she friendly?" wagging his head to the Spanish señorita in the exotic red dress. Lance shot him a mischievous wink.   
"Very," he confided with a laugh. Jamie turned to face Pietro, a hurt expression on her face.   
"Hey! I heard that!" she pouted, before suddenly winding up and smacking him across the mouth.   
"Ouchy!" Pietro's hand flew up to his sore red slap mark, before he turned to Jamie, eyes flashing, and whined, "What did you do that for?" Jamie shrugged in reply.   
"I don't know," she admitted dumbly. "I just always wanted to do that, and you're the first guy who's gotten close enough for me to try it. Although honestly, I don't really know why all the hot guys seem to think I'm this scary chick or whatever! I mean, I've got really hot blonde hair and brown eyes! I'm a hottie! It says so on my shirt here, see? So honestly, I don't know what is it about me, maybe my perfume's, like, a guy repellent or whatever, and if that's the case, then for a cologne called Black Rose, it's got a very misleading title, and I would totally want my money back...!"   
"Uh oh...traces of Morgan here," Pietro muttered in dismay. Lance, meanwhile, was staring wide-eyed at the rambling Jamie, going on about her hot-ness, before turning apprehensively to his own date.   
"Um...so, Kelly...that's a really pretty name you've got there," he began tentatively. Cali turned to him, arms crossed over her ample breasts and frown etched into her face.   
"Huh, my name's Cali, not Kelly!" she huffed. "Kelly's such a dumb blonde name, like that chick from _Married...With Children._ Hey, did you know I can sing the whole theme song to _Married...With Children?_ It goes like this, 'kay: Ahem. Ahem. Ahem! All right! Love and marriage, love and marriage/Go together like a horse and carriage/This, I tell you brother/You can't have one without the, other/Love and marriage, love and marriage..."   
"Eh heh..." Lance not-so-discreetly inched away from the singing Cali. Plastering a great big phony smile on his face, he choked out squeakily, "Scuse us for a sec, okay?" And before either Cali, who had now moved on to the _Brady Bunch_ theme, and Jamie, who was scrunching up her nose as she tried to remember that word she couldn't pronounce, could reply, he had already pulled the dumbfounded Pietro out of their booth and into the men's room. 

"What are we going to do?!" Pietro hissed frantically as soon as they were inside. Lance tiredly ran a hand through his longish dark hair, heaving a pathetic sigh.   
"I don't know," he mumbled dully. "Here, let's just, switch dates or whatever. I'm used to hyper schoolgirls discussing their looks...Kitty does that sometimes, especially right after she's gotten a new pair of shoes, which is about once every other week!"   
"Fine then, so you take the Tahiti or Jamaica or Bahamas or whatever island chick, and I'll go with the California girl," Pietro mumbled.   
"It's not California, it's Wisconsin!" Lance corrected him. Pietro glared.   
"No, no, you must be thinking of the triplets from Dumpwater back at the train station," he retorted. Lance scowled.   
"How can you remember all her names, anyway?" he grumbled. Pietro shrugged, before admitting, "I have the David Lee Roth CD, okay?"   
"Whatever," Lance huffed as he headed for the door. "Let's just get this over with." 

When the two returned to their table, they found Cali frowning in concentration as she adjusted the top half of her extra low-cut red minidress, while Jamie fumbled around with a tattered old pink babydoll tee covered with horrible scrawlings in the worst chicken-scratch handwriting either of them had ever seen. Lance discreetly slid in beside Jamie, who didn't seem to notice that her date for the afternoon had suddenly been switched around, while Pietro sat down next to Cali, who, unfortunately, wasn't quite dumb enough and actually _did_ notice the not-so-discreet little swap. As Jamie happily snuggled up to her new beau and started pestering him to sign her hot guys autograph T-shirt, Cali narrowed her vivid green eyes suspiciously, before gritting out, "Hey--what's going on here?" Pietro was left to handle her wrath, seeing how Lance was preoccupied with signing Jamie's unwashed autograph shirt with one hand and discreetly covering his nose with the other. He took a deep breath, before batting his eyes innocently and pouting, "What do you mean? Is anything wrong? Do you need me to get you some more iced tea?" Cali snorted impatiently.   
"No," she hissed. "I mean how come Lancie-poo's now snuggling up with my slutty bottled blonde sister?" Jamie snapped up from where she was gushing over Lance's scrawled signature.   
"Hey," she huffed. "You're talking about me, aren't ya?" Cali rolled her eyes.   
"No, I meant Jennifer," she snapped sarcastically. Jamie brightened up.   
"Oh, okay then," she chirped brightly, and went back to squealing over how, like, totally hot Lance was like the good little giggly airhead that she was. Cali sneered condescendingly, before focusing her attention again on Pietro and beginning to say, "So, what's with the switch, anyway? In case you haven't noticed, I'm not dumb enough to not realize that the two of you don't really look all that alike, and...Hey! Where did he go?" Cali's head whipped back and forth as she frantically scanned the Hooters for her missing beau...before promptly finding Pietro leaning against the glass bar counter, flirting with Lance's very friendly Spanish señorita. Cali bristled, as she stalked over to Pietro and dragged him back to their booth by the ear.   
"Owowowowow!" the highly unfortunate silver-haired youth whined, as his brunette date seethed, "Oh, please, I can't believe how shallow you are to have fallen for that trashy slut with the one hundred percent silicone 36DDs popping out of her stupid little red dress." Just then, Jamie suddenly thought of something, as she popped into their conversation to whine, "Hey...I just realized something! You couldn't have been talking about Jenny with that blonde slut remark, because she isn't a blonde!" Cali and Pietro just ignored her, as Pietro surprisingly agreed with Cali's comments about the Spanish señorita.   
"I know," he snorted. "She really needs to get some reconstructive surgery for that botched up boob job of hers. Those babies look more even faker than Britney Spears'." Cali blinked in surprise.   
"You mean that?" she cooed. Pietro, meanwhile, was nodding.   
"And that hair job, ew!" he shuddered, like the male equivalent of some snotty high school cheerleader type. "I mean, can those red roots _be_ any more obvious? Honestly, I don't know _what_ Lance saw in her. And that whole fake orange tan is so ridiculously, pathetically obvious, I'd almost feel sorry for her if she wasn't such a total loser." Cali, meanwhile, was staring dreamy-eyed at Pietro. _I'm in love!_ her inner self gushed. _Finally, I've met a guy just as snobby and spoiled as I am! _Pietro, meanwhile, was glancing nervously at the dreamy-eyed Cali, ogling him with a funny expression on her face.   
"Um...Cali?" he muttered nervously, to which he got no response. "Why...why are you staring at me like that?" He then suddenly remembered some chick flick that Jennifer had suckered him into watching with her, and realized to his horror that he recognized the look on Cali's face as one that equaled that of the giggly airhead that the movie called its heroine when she fell in love with some fruity Enrique Iglesias lookalike type, complete with the bigass mole and everything. _Oh, no! _his mind screamed in horror. _This isn't just some silly little crush, she's actually in love with me--although, who could blame her? I mean, I'm so perfect, and gorgeous, and charming, and magnetic, and smart, and witty, and I just adore my dimples when I smile..._a satisfied little smirk drifted onto Pietro's face as he rattled off his perfect qualities, while Cali continued to gawk at him with that stupid lovesick expression on her face and Jamie and Lance carried on their fascinating discussion about how blondes looked, like, hotter than brunettes--just take a look at Pamela Anderson versus Yasmine Bleeth, for example. Pietro, after having finally listed off his perfect qualities, right down to his perfect cute nose, was suddenly snapped back into reality as he caught Cali gawking at him like some pathetic lovesick little schoolgirl. _Uh oh, now she's gonna want for us to hitch off and go raise our youngins in Dumpwater, Wisconsin, as well! This is just great, I'll never be rid of her! _he groaned inwardly. A lightbulb went off in his head, as he suddenly thought of something. _Unless..._

* * *

Lance and Pietro wearily mounted the steps leading up to their apartment, thankful to have finally gotten rid of the two Falls sisters, who had been hauled safely onto the eight o' clock train heading back to the suburbs.   
"I can't believe you got the two girls mad at us so easily that they dumped us in one hour flat," Lance ooh-ed admiringly. "How did you do it? I mean, I know that Toad's a natural woman repellent, but one never would have guessed that _you_ had that talent as well." Pietro frowned, scrunching up his perfect nose.   
"Eh, I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult," he muttered. Lance laughed breezily as he opened the door to Apartment No. 666.   
"Consider that as a little bit of both," he said lightly, as he stepped inside, and was promptly greeted by a furious Jennifer, still rubbing her sore ear from where Cali and Jamie had shrieked and sobbed their laments over the date via cell phone.   
"All right," she lectured sternly, hands on her hips, "which one of you two told my sisters that you were gay?!" 

* * *

*Wondering what Roxy's been up to throughought this whole chapter? (besides being in talks with _Playgirl_ over the magazine cover, I mean! x_x) I'll reveal that in the next chapter. No hints till then, 'cept that you better be prepared for some good old fashioned wacky plots to take over the world. 


	10. Chapter Nine: Title's Too Damn Long To W...

**Chapter Nine: Pour Some Sugar On Sweet Child O' Mine Who's Proven That Every Rose Has Its Thorns By Giving Love A Bad Name (Whew! Told ya it was long! x_x)**   


* * *

The scene opens with all five members of Ömega decked out in combat fatigues and soldiers' caps, standing at attention around a rectangular wooden table bearing a massive world map with four specific locations circled viciously in red Magic Marker, as if preparing to rush off into battle. Roxy Oyama, also wearing camouflage, was pacing back and forth, barking out instructions like a drill sergeant and occasionally jabbing at the circled locations with a metal pointer.   
"All right, Privates, here's what we'll do!" the super producer harrumphed. "First, we start out by invading Southern California when they're least expecting it! After successfully conquering SoCal, we'll leave to capture Rio de Janeiro in Brazil--but be warned, they'll be prepared for you by then, and you'll have to work twice as hard at taking over. After Rio, we'll fly to the other side of planet; first we'll march into Cairo, Egypt on the continent of Africa, and lastly, we'll end our conquest by capturing Venice, Italy! And that's how we'll take over the world! Mwahahahahahah!" While Roxy cackled maniacally like some cheesy comic book villain, Jennifer, the only person in the room dressed normally in a blue denim miniskirt and white tank top, spoke up warily, "Um, Roxy? You _are_ talking about how Ömega will pull off their publicity stunt to promote the forthcoming _Backlash_ album by successfully playing four concerts on four continents in one day, aren't you? I mean, this isn't some crazy plot for actual global domination, is it?" Roxy sighed, and impatiently brushed away a strand of dyed honey-brown hair.   
"All right, all right," she grouched. "If you have to put it in those terms, then yes, I _am_ talking about how the band will capture the heart of the public in those four locations, and not actual world conquest." A movement suddenly caught the corner of her eyes, and Roxy whipped around, snapping, "Hey! Private Shortbread! Quit playing with your gum, this is serious!" Morgan obediently put her chewing gum back into her mouth, sulking, "All right, all right, you big meanie." Roxy leaned back, satisfied, and examined the rest of her motley crew.   
"Good. Now, as I was saying, as all of you obviously _don't _know, the rock band Def Leppard currently hold the record in the _Guinness Book of World Records_ by playing three hour-long concerts on three continents in one day," she resumed her speech. "That's our target right there: We're aspiring to shatter that record into a million worthless pieces by successfully completing four-on-four-in-one. At the end of each concert, the band will finish off the show with an encore consisting of a mystery cover of the biggest arena rock power ballad in history! Any questions?" The band failed to reply, as Jericho--or Private Airhead--boredly picked at his nails, Rikki--or Private Assclown--glared none too discreetly at the super producer over his bottle of Jack Daniel's, and Pietro--or Private Toxic II (I'll let you take a guess as to who's Private Toxic Numero Uno!)--continued brushing his already perfect hair. Roxy leaned back, satisfied.   
"Good. So no questions. Now, the sponsors have already been bullied into--um, that is, manipulated, I mean, convinced--into paying for all your expenses while on this mini-tour," she added. "And, I have also managed to sucker in--um, I mean, convince--several national networks, including FOX, CNN, and MTV into providing live coverage of the band on all four concerts. Now, as I believe I've covered all grounds, prepare to go to the airport at oh-one-hundred sharp next morning and take over the world, mwahahahahah!" she fired off.   
"Fine, whatever."   
"What's oh-one-hundred mean?"   
"One a.m.? That's too frickin' early! Are you insane?!"   
"Hey, who stole my earring?!"   
"Which earring?"   
"Will you just go and get ready for the promotional tour?!" Roxy hollered, and the band scrambled to get the hell out of there, scurrying to whichever corner they deemed safe, all with the common goal of getting as far away from the super producer as humanly possible. 

* * *

**12:45 a.m. the next morning...**

It was a scene of tranquility, a rare sight in Apartment No. 666, as Rikki and Jericho slept peacefully in their respective bunk beds, Morgan curled herself up into a tiny ball on the living room couch, clutching her giant, psychedelic hot pink Mr. TB (it's supposed to stand for Teddy Bear, not Tuberculosis!), and Lance and Pietro were passed out cold amidst their blanket of empty and crushed bear cans. Jennifer, meanwhile, slept on a chair, a glossy magazine folded facedown on her knees. 

Suddenly, a slender, chic figure dressed in a stylishly cut gray silk suit slammed the door wide open and barged into the trashed apartment, screeching through her bullhorn, "All right, Privates! Get ready to go to the airport and take over the world! Mwahahahahahah!" In other words, Roxy Oyama, Super Producer (and Super Evil Dictator), had arrived, to whisk Ömega away and take over the world (with their music). Unfortunately, however, the reaction that she got from the band wasn't exactly what she'd been hoping for. Morgan let out a terrified wail and nearly hit the ceiling, giant pink teddy bear and all, before shrieking, "Someone call 411! We're being robbed!" while Lance and Pietro slept peacefully on through all the noise. From his room, Rikki growled out something that the authoress really can't write down, unless she wants to push the rating up to R, while Jericho sulked, "Someone tell that...that Rachel chick to come back in eight hours so my hair can get its beauty sleep!" The only one with a reasonable reaction was, again, Jennifer, as she woke up with a start, upsetting the magazine in her lap which promptly fell to the floor. Covering up her mouth as she yawned, the pretty brunette manager stretched gingerly, before remarking, "All right, Roxy, you get the ropes, and I'll go wake up the band." 

Fifteen minutes later, after Morgan had been convinced that no, it wasn't Armageddon, Jericho had been lured out of the apartment with promise of one year's supply of kiwi extract conditioner, a loudly swearing and kicking Rikki had been chained down firmly into a wheelchair and wheeled outside, and Lance and Pietro were finally roused from their beer-induced hibernation by a bucket of icy cold water, followed by one filled to the brim with scalding hot water, a bedraggled and exhausted Jennifer finally hobbled out of the apartment herself, locking the ruined door after her. Roxy, meanwhile, was calmly herding the now tamed members of Ömega into a luxurious white stretch limo she'd acquired, and Jennifer's eyes widened as she examined the car, before murmuring, "Wow, you certainly went all out for this little promotional stunt, didn't you?" as she climbed inside. Roxy got in after the manager, and was right away met with a gasp of horror, as said manager, seated all the way in the back between Jericho and Morgan and right behind the Toxic Twins, who took up the entire middle section of the limo, took notice of just who exactly was sitting beside Roxy in the driver's seat. A terrified Jennifer choked out, "You...you're letting _Rikki_ drive?" Roxy shrugged, before muttering defensively, "Hey, some compromises had to be made in order to get Mr. Rock Star over here into the limo." She then added, as Rikki successfully pulled away from the curb with little incident, "Besides, it's just driving a limo. How can anyone possibly screw this up?" 

Fifteen minutes later, Jennifer sighed tiredly as she watched the infamously belligerent Rikki badmouth the cop, and earn himself yet another ticket. _Oh, well,_ she thought to herself, as the impatient Roxy yelled at the cop to hurry the hell up because they had a plane to catch, and was rewarded with the cop slapping yet another ticket onto the mounting pile of traffic fines, _even if Ömega doesn't succeed in breaking the Leps' record of three-on-three-in-one, they'll at least be guaranteed a spot in the _Guinness Book of World Records_ for most traffic tickets in under half an hour!_

* * *

A massive swarm of media paparazzi was awaiting Ömega at the airport in New York, as Rikki finally succeeded in crashing his way into a parking space, taking up six spots before switching off the engine. Rikki and Roxy exited first, working their way quickly and efficiently through the crowd of cameramen and reporters. Out next was Morgan, who cheered and happily bounced her way out of the limo, a huge grin on her face as though she were an eight-year-old child who'd just ridden her first roller coaster. Lance and Pietro then got out of the car with no problem, Rikki's atrocious driving having had absolutely zilch effect on them (they're not called the Toxic Twins for nothing!). Finally, poor Jennifer managed to stumble and totter her way dazedly out of the limo, managing to look both awfully sick and murderously pissed off at one certain dark-haired front man for the wild ride to the airport. 

As Jennifer hobbled her way dizzily about, Roxy quickly barked off some instructions before shoving all five band members in front of their respective cameras, while hogging up five herself and dictating off the band's mission to the hungry press hounds. Rikki slung his black leather jacket over his shoulders as he fought his way amidst the crowds, fixing his Patented Glare Of Death© on the cameras aimed at his face (and the one that the young MTV camerawoman was lowering and zooming in to focus on his leather-pants-covered crotch), before holding up one hand and extending a certain finger (here's a hint: it had to be blurred out for live national television), muttering grouchily, "*Bleep* off!" before stalking into the building without offering another word. Jericho, meanwhile, was trilling happily into the camera, "Well, you see, the way I tone my upper body is I start out with some simple warm-up exercises, like sit ups, push ups, and stomach crunches, before moving in to some cardio. Then, afterwards, I work on each body part separately, such as bicep curls, and tricep curls, and--" At that moment, the reporter finally cut in, mumbling, "Um, Mr. Locklear? We wanted to know your opinions on this tenacious, potentially record-breaking concert event of Ömega's. I'm pretty sure that the viewers of NBC aren't really all that interested in your work out routine." Jericho momentarily stopped rambling about shoulder exercises and protein shakes, blinking wide, clueless eyes as the reporter's words sank in.   
"Oh. Well then, go interview that...Oh, no wait, I forgot her name! Oh, yeah! Go interview that Rena chick; she's taking care of all the boring details," he sulked, jerking his thumb to where Roxy was, gloating and basking in the glow of the clicks and flashes of hundreds and thousands of cameras going off. Jericho then turned his attention to the sea of paparazzi, cupping his hands around his mouth as he hollered, "All right, so where's the MTV crew? C'mon, you guys, I swear I won't beat the living *bleep* out of you like I did to that Internet critic of yours! Ugh, you really think I'd muss my perfect hair--and in front of _live national television, _too?!" 

Meanwhile, Pietro was rambling to a hapless reporter who'd done the stupid thing of asking for his opinion of the mini-tour, "Well, you see, it's not easy being so absolutely perfect! I mean, for _me_ it is, since I'm so much better than everyone else, but for most other people, it's a lost cause trying to attain this level of perfection! I mean, for one thing, they'd have to be a helluva lot more gorgeous than they are! And besides, it's not as easy taking care of perfection as one might think! Take my lustrous, silky hair, for example: Now, I owe a lot of it to being me, naturally, and my perfect genes (eventhoughmyfather'sanass*bleep*!) but you have to realize, it takes hours upon hours of washing, and rinsing, and special custom-made shampoos, and brushing, and combing. And, another thing, notice how soft and smooth my hair is? Well, that's because I use a special kind of papaya extract conditioner. Now, on to my perfect complexion..." While Pietro raved on and on about how perfect he was, the ABC cameraman assigned to cover the only female member of Ömega grumbled loudly, "Ey, wasn't there supposed to be some bassist chick? Where the *bleep* is she, didn't she get off the limo with the rest of your crew?" Lance turned around from the camera where he was following Roxy's instructions precisely (which where, and I quote, stand still, zip your mouth, and look pretty!) and hissed impatiently, "Look down!" The cameraman reluctantly lowered his camera a few inches, and saw still nothing.   
"Ey! Ain't nobody 'ere!" he whined, and Lance turned around again and ordered, beginning to sound irritated, "Go further down!" The cameraman complied...and saw still nothing. Just as he was about to give up and go join the swarm of reporters chasing after a murderously pissed off Rikki Stixx--the most important band member, being the front man, and the only member from whom they hadn't gotten any marketable quotes out of, unless one counted *Bleep* off!--a chirpy, high-pitched voice whined from below, "I'm down here, you big meanie!" The cameraman swung his camera dramatically lower, and finally caught sight of Mini-Me Morgan, hopping up and down and waving her arms wildly about in an effort to catch his attention, sulking, "See? Down here!" 

* * *

Waiting for Ömega in Southern California was more paparazzi and a surprisingly sold out arena with ten-thousand-seating capacity. Jennifer blinked in amazement when she heard those news, taking into account the fact that Ömega had yet to have their debut album hit shelves in record stores, had released a single that was only starting to gain momentum and climb the Billboard charts, and a resume that consisted of playing primarily to the New York underground rock scene. Roxy, on the other hand, wasn't the least bit surprised, as she leaned back, satisfied, smirking gleefully, "It's amazing how many idiots you can sucker into paying good money to see a band they've just begun to hear of play, if you promise them that they'll get their ridiculous grinning faces on live national television!" 

* * *

The first concert in SoCal went surprisingly smoothly (if you can dismiss the fact that Pietro--who else?--slipped onstage over a silky pink bra and went diving facefirst, falling on his perfect cute nose and whining for an emergency plastic surgeon for the rest of the set)...at least until the time for the mystery cover of the "biggest arena rock power ballad in history". As soon as it was time for the encore, Lance delved into the familiar guitar intro of Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine", while Rikki sang out, loudly and clearly, "Shot through the heart/And you're to blame/You give love a bad name!" Morgan just dropped her bass, looking confused, and Jericho ignored the lead singer and lead guitarist as he eagerly slid into the opening drum sequence of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me". All at once, the band stopped playing, and turned around to glare at each other. Rikki was the first one to speak, opening his mouth and hissing venomously, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Pietro shot back defensively, _"We_ are doing our jobs! What the hell are _you_ doing?!"   
"Hey," Morgan started to whine, pouting, "I thought we were supposed to cover Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorns."   
Jericho snorted, before smirking, "No offense or anything, munchkin, but you were probably on one of your Spaz Trips when Roxy announced what the cover would be, because I distinctly remember it being "Pour Some Sugar On Me!" Rikki sneered condescendingly upon hearing the blonde drummer's words.   
"You're one to say such things, aren't you, Mr. In One Ear And Out The Other?" he spat out in a bitingly sarcastic tone. "Listen, I don't know what the hell you all thought the cover was going to be, but as for me, I distinctly remember Roxy saying that the cover song would be Bon Jovi's "You Give Love A Bad Name!" Lance threw down his guitar, glaring at the front man as he growled, "Maybe all that Aqua Net's gotten into your brains, Rixx, but Roxy told Pietro and I that the cover would be GN'R's "Sweet Child O' Mine!" Pietro nodded vehemently, adding, "Yeah--we even went out and bought top hats, for crying out loud!" 

Fortunately, right before Ömega could turn the first stop on their mini-tour into an all-out melee, Roxy stormed onto the stage, huffing, "What the hell do you think you're doing? The audience is expecting the mystery arena rock power ballad, in case you've forgotten!" Upon hearing the voice of their trusty super producer, the members of Ömega turned around as one, before cranking up the decibels.   
"Well, he said that--!"   
"Hey, this is all her fault, for--!"   
"I don't know what the rest of you are doing, but as for me, I am playing--!"   
"Wah! I wanted to cover "Every Rose Has Its Thorns!"   
"Hah! "Pour Some Sugar On Me" isn't even a power ballad--!"   
"Hey, has anyone seen by hairbrush?"   
Roxy, meanwhile, was taking this all in calmly, arms crossed over her chest and nodding along, humming, "Mm hm," every now and then. Finally, she spoke up, "Oh, is that what the problem is?" Lance took charge, as he scowled, before snapping, "Yes. You told Pietro and I that we were to be covering GN'R's "Sweet Child", but these people here seem to think that they're supposed to be covering either "Every Rose", "Bad Name", and/or "Pour Some Sugar!" Roxy blinked wide, innocent lashes.   
"Why, what is the problem, then?" she asked. Dropping the bombshell, she proceeded to add in a sugary sweet voice, "You should all know by now that it's all four of those songs."   
At her words, the band members seemed to drop their differences and agree on one thing, as they mumbled in unison, "Huh?"   
"Didn't I tell you before?" Roxy feigned surprise. "You were supposed to cover Bon Jovi's "You Give Love A Bad Name" in SoCal, Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" in Rio, Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorns" in Cairo, and finally, Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" in Venice." The super producer allotted a total of five seconds for the band to digest this new information, before saying rather cheerily, "Now go and play "Bad Name" already! We're wasting some valuable time here just talking!"   
"But that's not fair!"   
"Hey, I wasn't even prepared for this--!"   
"What the hell? You mean to tell me that I just spent the last sixteen hours perfecting the guitar solo of "Sweet Child", and it turns out that--"   
"Aw! How come "Every Rose Has Its Thorns" comes in at second to last?"   
"Hey, shut up so I can find my Aqua Net hairspray!"   
Roxy bristled.   
"Go and play "Bad Name", already, and quit wasting time!" she hollered impatiently, and the band eeped, before obediently scrambling to their positions, as the three guitarists hurriedly shrieked, "Shot through the heart/And you're to blame!" before Rikki dramatically sang out, "Darling, you give love...a bad name!" 

* * *

The Rio crowd waiting for Ömega at the airport seemed to mirror the media hounds that had swarmed the SoCal airport, as the plane finally landed and the band members themselves hobbled dazedly into a waiting sea of paparazzi, all five of them looking like (albeit highly glammed out) zombies due to their jet lag. One of the reporters had the stupidity to holler obnoxiously after the bedraggled band, "Oy, do you honestly believe you can complete four concerts on four continents in one day?!" This time, it wasn't just Rikki, but all of Ömega who turned around, extended certain fingers (again, three guesses as to which ones), and growled out, "*Bleep* off!" 

* * *

Jennifer watched worriedly as the exhausted young band struggled through its hour-long setlist in front of the jam-packed outdoors Rio crowd. Turning to Roxy, the concerned manager urged, "You've got to call this thing off! Look at the band; they're exhausted. They could fall ill at any minute now!" Roxy waved her hands back and forth, not in the least bit concerned.   
"Oh, don't worry, they'll pull through," she assured in that nasal, phony Hollywood voice, and not surprisingly, Jennifer wasn't the least bit convinced. She bit her lip as she watched the band finally struggle toward the end of their set, and breathed a sigh of relief as it came time for the encore of a cover of "Pour Some Sugar On Me". Above all the off-key guitar riffs and erratic drumming, Rikki managed to holler out the lyrics, struggling to remember just exactly what they were. 

"Love is like a bomb, baby, c'mon get it on   
Livin' like a lover with a radar phone   
Lookin' like a tramp, like a video vamp   
Demolition woman, can I be your man?" 

Jennifer nodded along to the lyrics. So far, so good. Rikki had yet to add one of his infamously for the worse improvisations, and the band managed to lurch through the song without much incident. 

"Razzle 'n' a dazzle 'n' a flash a little light   
Television lover, baby, go all night   
Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet   
Little miss ah innocent sugar me, yeah!" 

And then, right before the chorus, disaster peeked its head again, much as it had during the first club date at Valentino's with their new guitarists. Only this time, it wasn't Pietro who messed up the lyrics, but rather, Rikki, who, suffering from jet lag, exhaustion, and a bad temper, grouchily snapped into the microphone his own made up version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me". Lance, Pietro, and Morgan, who were supposed to back him up, simply shrugged and went along with this bizarre new set of lyrics, not one of them knowing the correct version since they'd been busy practicing other songs. The only band member who'd rehearsed for "Sugar" was Jericho, and he was without a microphone, although even if he _had_ been the one doing the singing, he would have probably messed it up anyway, seeing how he was, well...Jericho. Meanwhile, much to Jennifer's horror and Roxy's irritation, Rikki and the three guitarists shrieked out Rikki's made-up lines of, "Shake your boobie/Fake it up/Bake the bon bon/Break it up!" As the fearsome foursome delved into "Sugar's" self-titled chorus, Jennifer covered her face in her hands and moaned, "Oh, my God! Please, please, _please_ don't let the crowd understand what they just said!" As if that wasn't bad enough already, Rikki went from switching the lyrics to skipping several lines and _then_ messing up the ones he did know, as he turned the line of, "You got the peaches, I got the cream," into, "You got the bitches, I got the green!" making Ömega seem like a ring of wannabe pimps rather than a rock & roll band. Fortunately for poor Jennifer, however, God seemed to have taken pity on the frazzled manager, and few in the Rio crowd seemed to understand just exactly what Rikki was actually screeching so horribly off-key about into the microphone. 

* * *

**Cairo, Egypt...**

Rikki stared wide-eyed at the massive crowd awaiting the band in Cairo, all gawking right back up at him expectantly, as if waiting for the dark-haired front man to do something. Which he soon did.   
"Eh heh..." Rikki tee heed in dismay, before his eyes rolled way back into his head, and he fainted dead away, right on stage. The other, equally exhausted members of Ömega stared at their collapsed lead singer, then shrugged, and, as if seeing absolutely nothing wrong with it, promptly followed in their front man's example and fainted as well.   
"Oh, my God," a concerned Jennifer murmured, as she worriedly dashed onto the stage to tend to the unconscious members of the band, sprawled out cold in various different positions. Roxy, meanwhile, had turned her back to the sight, and was speaking to the concert promoters on her cell phone. She murmured an affirmation of Ömega's collapse, before saying, "All right, who had Cairo at six?" After a pause, during which somebody presumably replied, Roxy cleared her throat, before saying curtly, "Congratulations, sir, you've just won the lottery." She then proceeded to add, as Jennifer was yelling at the EMT's to hurry up and get the band to a hospital, "Now remember, as person overseeing the entire lottery, I am entitled to twenty-five percent of your winnings!" 

* * *

*Whew! This took longer than I'd expected! I'm actually kind of surprised that I managed to fit the entire concert into one chapter. Next time I update will be to wrap this sucker up...which means, get ready for Rogue's part next! Yay! ^_^ 


	11. Chapter Ten: Farewell to the Jungle

*All right, this chapter's really short, but it still serves its purpose of being pretty funny (I hope!) and wrap up Part I: (A) Motley Crew (No, Really!) as well as give you a little preview of what's going to happen during not Rogue's, but rather, Wanda's section ^_^ 

* * *

  
**Chapter Ten: Farewell to the Jungle (Oh, like you could come up with a better title!)**

* * *

_ He still had nightmares about it. The particular night upon their arrival had been bitterly cold, with howling winds and a terrifying thunderstorm. Lance had been slouching boredly on a couch, Todd was complaining about how much he hated not having cable, and he himself had managed to sucker Freddy into playing an innocent game of Go Fish with him with the next month's groceries at stake. And then...whang! The cracked wooden doors had swung wide open, and the most horrifying sight of his life barged straight in, much like the way Roxy Oyama had when she'd hauled off Ömega on their half-assed mini-tour, only one hundred times scarier._   
_ "Guess who's back?"_   
_Had it been any other person, he would have remarked, in his usual smart-ass way and with an insolent little smirk, that she seemed to have lost some weight...but then again, this wasn't just any other person. Mystique had returned! Dun dun dun! And she'd brought back Wanda with her! Double dun dun dun! And right then and there, in that one single evening, the two most terrifying of terrors in high heels had returned to make his life a living hell! Dun dun dun!_

"Ahhhhh!"   
Lance tossed a backwards glance from where he was, seated on a metal folding chair and casually tuning his guitar, to both cluck his tongue sympathetically and try to not give Pietro a hard time for screaming like a little girl. _Poor little guy--he's having those Mystique-and-Wanda nightmares again,_ he thought to himself, watching as Pietro scrambled up from where he'd been napping to hobble over to the sink and fetch a glass of cold water. The rest of the band were out bar-hopping, Roxy had taken off to buy a new car with her winnings from the concert, and Jennifer was shopping for groceries, leaving the two guitarists alone in the apartment. Outside, torrents of icy cold water plastered furiously against the apartment walls, signaling that the thunderstorm was far from being over. Inside, Pietro was thanking his lucky stars that, despite the fact that it was an eerily similar night to Mystique and Wanda's reappearance, he could rest assured that the Toxic Twins in Lance and Pietro were very safe from the (other, even more terrifying) Terror Twins in Mystique and Wanda. 

And then, the door to the apartment slammed wide open in a furious rush of howling winds, and an ominous figure stood silhouetted against the door frame.   
"Guess who's back?" she--the shadowy silhouette was obviously a female--sang out in a taunting tone.   
"Ahhhhh!" This time, both Toxic Twins screamed like terrified little girls, as Pietro called out hopefully, "Roxy?"   
A tall, blue-skinned, redheaded woman dressed in a black leather halter top and matching miniskirt, stepped into the trashed apartment to prove otherwise. Pietro let out a terrified little squeak, as Lance eeped in dismay, "Um...Mystique?" The older half of Pietro's Terror Twins sneered back at him, before barging full force into the living room, being careful not to slip on the discarded bottles of cheap wine, as the older Brotherhood member ventured timidly, "Er...if it's okay for me to ask...why are you here?" In response, Mystique tossed the two boys a rolled-up newspaper, and instructed, "Read the headline." Lance and Pietro obediently opened up the folded pages, and read diligently.   
"Um..._Eleven-Year-Old Crashes Family's Farm Vehicle Into Ditch?"_ Lance guessed, as Pietro clucked his tongue, adding, "Oh, what a shame, I can see why you would want to bring this to our attention."   
"Yeah," Lance chipped in his two cents. "Those damn farm vehicles, always so unpredictable, and the poor farmers' sons have to start driving them before they've even finished grade school! Tis an outrage!"   
"No kidding, and the insurance is just atrocious," Pietro chattered on. "I saw this on a TV documentary on FOX once, and did you know that in order for the injured party to receive their checks, they have to carry around a caged chicken in the back seat at all times?"   
Lance huffed, insulted.   
"Why, that is just totally and completely unreasonable--!" he started to babble.   
"That's not the headline I wanted you two idiots to read!" Mystique exploded furiously, and Lance and Pietro stopped amidst their highly intelligent discussion of caged chickens and farm vehicles to eep like scared mice and hide behind their newspaper.   
"The other headline," Mystique was instructing impatiently, jabbing at said headline with her index finger. This time, it was Pietro who read the words, murmuring out loud, "Uh, you mean..._Spring Trial Set For The Case Of The State Of New York vs. Wanda Maximoff?"_   
"Yes, that's the one," Mystique grouched. "Now do you two brainless boys have an idea of why I've been forced to come back here and bail you out of trouble just as I was about to bully, erm sucker, erm manipulate, erm _convince_ a group of disgruntled (and highly idiotic!) mutants to donate their hard-earned money to our cause?" Lance, meanwhile, was reading over the headline again, muttering, "Boy, here were Pietro and I, landing ourselves in jail for one night over charges of assaulting a critic, and Wanda just _has_ to go and outshine us by actually getting herself a court trial and everything!" Mystique's eyebrows flew up.   
"You were in jail?" she hissed. Pietro quickly elbowed the older boy silent, tee heeing nervously, "Er...of course not! See, our band mates were, but Lance and I were good little boys, and the only reason we went to the jail was because we had to bail them out!" Quickly attempting to swerve the subject to something besides their own imprisonment, Pietro added nonchalantly, "So, about my ultra-scary twin sister getting herself a trial..." Mystique shrugged.   
"She didn't explain too much over the phone," the shapeshifting mutant admitted. "All she mentioned was something about an Ally McBeal lookalike and her musclehead husband trying to hit on her."   
"Ew!" Lance and Pietro half-shrieked, half-giggled nasally in unison. 

Mystique began heading out the door, dragging her two boys with her by the ears, as they whined, "Ow! Owowowowowow!" As soon as they were out of the apartment, the evil dictator--um, that is, Mystique--turned around and said sarcastically, "So, speaking of muscleheads...any idea what might have instigated _this?!"_ And she thrust a copy of a glossy magazine into their faces. Lance and Pietro leaned back, and promptly found themselves staring into a seamlessly pieced together collage of glossy band photos, among them a concert picture of Rikki crudely flipping someone off as he dove offstage to start a riot at one of Ömega's own club dates, a photo of Jericho looking up into the camera as he grinned stupidly from amidst a throng of skimpily-clad groupies, toasting whomever was taking the picture with his half-drained bottle of Jack Daniel's, and, of course, the infamous cover picture of the inebriated Lance and Pietro wearing their guitars and nothing else. Above the incriminating cover, splashed across the page in bold red letters, was the headline, "Would You Let Your Daughter Date An Ömega Boy?" followed by Jericho's so very intelligent quote of how he and Heather Locklear were just like the Brothers Van Halen--they shared the same name, but were not related in any way, unlike, say, Joe Perry and Joe Piscopo--and finally, the by-line of none other than Lola Lolita. Lance and Pietro's eyes boggled out at the unflattering cover shot and even more unflattering cover story, and tee heed guiltily in unison, "Oh...eh heh, see the funniest thing..." Mystique, meanwhile, was waving the magazine wildly about, screeching, "Here I was, leaving the two of you in charge, and you not only allow Wanda to land herself a court trial, but go ahead and pose nude for a magazine, you two sluts, how the hell am I ever going to strike fear into the heart of Xavier by making him think that my army of mutants are tough as steel when he sees the two of you inebriated and naked and acting as though you're proud of it, and another thing, Aqua Net hairpsray and burgundy eye makeup is most definitely _not_ on the Brotherhood's agenda...!" Lance and Pietro sighed, as Mystique dragged them off into a waiting black car to take them to the county municipal courts where Wanda was being held. It looked like a long, _long_ drive ahead of them. 

* * *

*By the way, in case you're curious, Pietro's "documentary" about the chicken in the farm vehicle insurance policy was actually from an episode of _Married...With Children_ ^_^. Anyways, let's see, so in the end, Lola _did_ get her revenge on the band for setting her up at the gas station in Chapter Seven! End of Part I; I'll try to post a cast list for Rogue's part in a few days, so in the meantime, start submitting characters for her section, especially teenyboppers (preferably some males) and like five more teen pop idols (try to sprinkle in some males too, like parodies of Enrique Iglesias or whatever)! I'll try to post something witty for Rogue's Cast List, like I did with the ten commandments of heavy metal and everything, but keep in mind that I don't know a whole lot about teen pop, so don't go jumping on me if that doesn't happen! x_x 


	12. Part II: TRHell

**Part II: TRHell**

* * *

Rogue slouched low in her seat, impatiently flipping through an old issue of _Rolling Stone_ in her search for the Guns N' Roses sighting article that Kitty had sworn she'd seen in there. Meanwhile, Kitty herself was sitting in front of the widescreen television with Jean, the channel turned to a local music video station which was running some lousy teenybopper crapfest called _Pop! Goes The Music Video._ The two girls were barely paying any attention to the TV itself, as Jean was busy lamenting her mounting relationship woes with Scott to a sympathetic Kitty.   
"He just keeps on breaking dates left and right," Jean sighed morosely, absently tucking a stray lock of brilliant red hair behind her left ear. "I mean, I know he must be working very hard to support the Institute now that the adults are gone, and I really do support and sympathize with him--the poor guy must be exhausted after whatever important job he's claimed he's acquired, so I can understand a few broken dates. But for him to make plans after school and then suddenly cancel them without giving an excuse as to why...And then there's the curious fact as to when I offered to come visit him sometime at this secretive and important job of his, and he just turned white and started blabbing and absolutely refused, claiming I should never ask him about his business like he's some weird wannabe Mafia kingpin!" Kitty giggled at the mob crack, before clucking her tongue sympathetically and murmuring, "Yeah, I totally know how you feel. Lance mentioned a couple of weeks ago that they're broke too, ever since Mystique ditched them to search for funding, and I haven't seen him since, ever since he and Pietro somehow managed to find their own jobs!" Jean sat up straighter, absently reaching over to turn down the volume on an Alison Blair music video that _Pop! _was currently playing as she arched a scarlet brow.   
"No way, you're kidding me--somebody actually hired _those_ two guys?" she breathed in astonishment. Rubbing her blue-green eyes tiredly, she then proceeded to add upon Kitty's shrug as she picked up a Classifieds, "Great, even the _Brotherhood's_ outshone us! Now we've _really_ got to get jobs--Scott's the only one working, although where God forbid I ever find out, and Kurt and Evan were kicked out of their only job interview when Blue Boy had to go hit on a gorgeous blonde who just happened to be a guy!" Kitty shrugged helplessly, muttering, "So you really don't know what Scott's doing? Jeez, this is turning into a bad episode of _The Sopranos_ or something!" Jean shrugged helplessly, joining Rogue in flipping aimlessly through the pages, before adding, "What can I do about it? He absolutely refuses to tell me where he works at--it's all very hush hush, and all I can get out of him is that his job is supposedly highly important and very secretive. Needless to say, I'm not exactly all that convinced, if you know what I mean." Kitty giggled, as she half-teased, "So now what--are you going to, like, disguise yourself and stalk him?" Jean lifted an eyebrow at the perky freshman, frowning as she scolded mildly, "Kitty, you know it's not right to follow people around like that!" Clearing her throat and shifting her weight, she went on to say, "Besides, despite all this evasiveness, I really like Scott, and I trust him--that's what relationships are supposed to be built around, after all, trust." Kitty shrugged, nodding along and inwardly admitting to herself that the graceful junior had a point...but just then, Jean's vivid blue-green eyes darkened, as she added unexpectedly and in a low growl, "But just in case the lousy sneak really _is_ cheating on me with some tanned blonde airhead, I've cashed in his first paycheck to pay Tabitha to follow him around at this _Sopranos_ job of his!" 

At that moment, the elegant glass doors to the Xavier Mansion were slammed wide open, and Tabitha burst triumphantly into the palatial house, dragging a very sheepish-looking Scott by the ear as she strutted inside like some mighty conquistador.   
"Oh, Jeannie...guess who I found loitering around the Bayville Mall Food Court singing a ditty about the wonders of Chubby's Cheeseburger Castle!" the blonde bombshell sang out, as not only Jean but also Kitty and Rogue all turned around in unison upon hearing her words. Rogue's magazine promptly fell out of her lap, as Jean's mouth dropped open in a mixed combination of shocked amazement and dismay, and Kitty stopped squealing over some boy band on _Pop! Goes The Music Video_ to gawk in bewilderment at their mighty, fearless, proud leader.   
"Oh, my God! Scott?!" Jean breathed, at the same time that Rogue burst out, a tinge of something that sounded suspiciously like amusement in her voice, "You're a frigging quarterpounder, Summers!" Scott Summers, the mighty leader of the X-Men team, was decked out in the Xavier living room in all his cheeseburger glory, wearing a hamburger costume complete with mustard and pickles over a pair of burgundy tights and ridiculous felt shoes with little bells attached to their pointy soles. He promptly began to blush like a fire engine, as Jean questioned, _"This_ is what you've been doing all along?! Scott, why did you feel like you had to keep it a secret that you worked at the mall? There's absolutely no shame in what you do." Rogue and Kitty both turned to the older girl in amazement, immensely admiring looks on their faces at the fact that Jean had managed to keep a perfectly straight face throughout her entire little encouraging speech. Scott cleared his throat uncomfortably, before mumbling, "Oh, please, like you weren't going to laugh at me! Look, I'm working for five dollars and seventy-five cents an hour, I parade around the Food Court in a freakin' cheeseburger costume and sing annoying little jingles for a job, my co-worker is a scary wiener dog who keeps hitting on me _and_ whom I have no way of telling whether is actually a guy or a girl, and there's some annoying reporter from the school newspaper chasing me around trying to get a cover story on how it feels like to be a star student and varsity soccer MVP and somehow still manage to slave away over a French fry grill for minimum wage! I don't need any flak from my own teammates!" Jean leaned back, a look of concern washing over her features as she realized that Scott's face was turning a rather interesting shade of purple, before reaching over and enveloping her more-or-less official boyfriend in a soothing hug, murmuring in the way a mother talks to her scared child, "There, there, now, Scott. Shh, it's okay, everything's going to be just fine...Do you want a glass of warm milk and a chocolate chip cookie? Maybe that will help you calm down." Rogue darted the duo of a wary look, before mumbling, "Hn, wouldn't want to be a part of _that_ couple; I'm going back to that _Rolling Stone_ to search for the GN'R article that Kitty swears is in there." Kitty bounced after Rogue, calling out, "Hey, wait for me! _Pop! Goes The Music Video's _supposed to be playing the debut video from a new rock band!" Tabitha lit up, as she chirped, "Ooh, I've heard of them! Ömega! Hey, I wanna see too; I've heard their frontman's supposed to be really sexy in that moody, smoldering, always pissed off kind of way!" 

The three girls bounded in front of the widescreen TV, while Jean tried to comfort Scott and convince him that his life didn't suck too pathetically. Rogue picked up her _Rolling Stone_ and grumpily resumed browsing for the Guns N' Roses article that Kitty had sworn on Kurt's life was in there, as Tabitha chattered happily with Kitty, mainly about how the Ömega boys were supposed to be really into wearing tight leather and no shirts while performing. Just then, _Pop! Goes The Music Video _finished running a video of some new hotshot Latin lover named Chavo Aguilar, and cut to it male co-host, a dark-haired, green-eyed wannabe Carson Daly in his early twenties named Reese Clayton, who spoke up brightly, "All right, we've been keeping you in suspense long enough! Here it is, fresh from, well, super producer Roxy Oyama, the debut video by one of those rock & roll band thingies, a cover of Panama's song "Ömega" from Van Halen." Just then, one of the technicians quickly ran up to Reese and whispered something into his ears. Reese looked confused for a second, as he hissed, "What do you mean I got it wrong?! I'm Reese Clayotn, damn it, I can't get anything wrong--Oh. Okay, okay, fine, so I'll correct it!" Turning back to the audience, he cleared his throat before grumpily muttering, "I mean, the video's a cover of Ömega's song "Van Halen", here being covered by that rock & roll band thingie, Panama!"   
"Uck..." The technician quickly ran back to Reese, and whispered something else into his ear. Reese's green eyes flashed in annoyance, as he quickly shooed the poor technician away, grumbling, "All right, all right! I'll get it this time, I swear! Ahem! Anyways, here it is, the debut music video...that my lovely co-hostess Marlena Veronica Christina Shania Patricia Cassandra Allana Susanna Cummings--but feel free to call her Mary Sue for short--is gonna introduce!" And he made an exaggerated gesture toward said co-hostess, a petite bottled blonde in pastel pink who giggled happily before chirping, "Like, that's right, like, Mary Sue here, and, like, you can bet I'm gonna, like, get this right, because I'm, like, Mary Sue, darn it, and I'm, like, perfect and can do, like, no wrong! Anywho, here's, like, "Panama", a tribute to the, like, Van Halen song from, like, emerging heavy metal sensation Ömega!" 

Meanwhile, Jean was leading Scott to a couch, trying to convince him with waning success that burying his face into the palms of his hands wasn't going to help make his job with what Scott had deemed "that wiener dog he-she" any more enjoyable.   
"Come on, Scott, we'll get through this," Jean murmured comfortingly, trying to ignore Tabitha's happy chattering about how the frontman really _was_ hot as hell in that always-pissed-off-so-don't-*bleep*-with-me kind of way. Scott stopped sulking to glance up morosely, whining, "But you have no idea how scary and annoying it is to have some crazed school newspaper reporter chick chasing after you with a Polaroid camera while you're trying to dodge the advances of a greasy-haired human hot dog whom you have no idea whether is actually a man or a woman!" Jean patiently blew a strand of soft red hair away from her face, as she tried once again to soothe the frazzled team leader, "Look at it this way, Scott, as soon as the rest of the household can find employers crazy enough to hire them--um, I mean, can find jobs--you will probably be able to scale back the amount of time you have to spend dressed as a, well, chubby cheeseburger, and--" 

"Oh, my God! OhmyGoddohmyGodohmyGod! That's Lance! That's _Lance!_ That's _my_ boyfriend and his annoying stuck-up roommate who're schmoozing with the groupies in the front row!" The high-pitched, shrill screech snapped Scott and Jean's attention from Scott's career woes to the dismayed and utterly furious Kitty, who was being desperately held back by Rogue and Tabitha as the two older girls tried to stop her from hurling the remote control into the TV screen depicting a grinning Lance, wearing his guitar too low as he pranced amidst a throng of top-heavy groupies crammed into strategically ripped tank tops.   
"Kitty, calm down, it's just a music video, he's not really trying to score with all those groupies!" Tabitha shrieked desperately, just as Kitty suddenly remembered something.   
"Wait a minute! I'm the Shadowcat! I can phase through stuff! Ugh, can't believe I ditzed out like that." And Kitty promptly phased right through Tabitha and Rogue and took aim with the remote control. Rogue's face contorted into an expression that was a mixture of dismay, irritation, and mild amusement, as she turned helplessly to the only one in the room who could possibly stop Kitty from unleashing her appetite for destruction on the poor, defenseless television set.   
"Jean! Do something!" she wailed frantically, just as Kitty was about to throw the remote control right through the widescreen TV monitor.   
"Don't worry, I'm on it," Jean sighed, shifting her attention from the sulking Scott to the furious Kitty and using her telekinesis to gently take the remote control away from the furious freshman. 

Fortunately for the three (slightly) saner X-Men and their television set, the "Panama" music video with Lance and the rest of the band partying with groupies soon ended, allowing Jean an opportunity to attempt and calm Kitty down. Meanwhile, back on the set of _Pop! Goes The Music Video, _Reese was blabbing something, trying to look serious and thoughtful as he fired off what was obviously a hastily-rehearsed speech, "And now, from the partying pranks of "Panama" into something more serious--my lovely and perfect co-hostess, Mary Sue, is about to leave this show after a three-year stint." Bottled blonde, blue-eyed Mary Sue cut into his speech, chirping, "That's, like, totally right. You see, my agent's, like, offered me a position as the, like, secret fifth member of the Fantastic Four, who just happens to be, like, billionaire Bruce Wayne's long-lost daughter, and is also, like, the new love interest of Spiderman, who's just, like, recently broken up with his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, who, like, conveniently turned into, like, an uber-bitch for no reason at all! And, like, I just couldn't _possibly_ refuse that role!" Reese nodded along soberly, before speaking up, "That's right, we'll miss you _soooo_ much, Mary Sue. But, on the bright side, it _is_ an exciting opportunity for our loyal female viewers to audition for the position of the co-hostess on _Pop! Goes The Music Video!_ You get to hang out with all sorts of cool pop stars who constantly drop by the show, you instantly acquire an army of shallow, mindlessly screaming teenyboppers...and of course, the biggest bonus of it all, you get to hang out with me--Reese Clayton!"   
"That's right, like, Reesey," Mary Sue cooed, ogling her co-host with starry baby-blue eyes. "I'll, like, miss you _soooo_ _soooo_ much, too! And, like, a word out to, like, my future replacement: have, like, a ton of fun on this show! Like Reesey mentioned, you get to, like, hang out with only the cutest guy in the whole, like, planet--well, except for, like, that cutie pie baby face Jake Brents from, like, the bestest boy band in the whole wide world, BOYZ, and, like, like, like..." And then she added offhandedly and in a rather nonchalant voice, the one sentence that instantly caught the X-Men's wandering attentions, "Besides, the pay's, like not too bad either!"   
"You tell it like it is, Mary Sue," Reese chirped, grinning stupidly into the camera. "And now we'll explain all the details for the audition of the newest co-hostess of _Pop! Goes The Music Video..._but not before playing that brand new Candy Angel music video you've all been waiting for! Yay!" 

A glint had appeared in Scott's shades as soon as mention of a well-paying job was chirped out in an insanely bubbly voice, as he turned to the four girls in the living room and spoke up, "You know, if one of you lands the hosting job, I won't have to complain so much anymore about how sucky my job is!"   
"Oh, like, I would be perfect for the job!" Kitty exclaimed proudly, straightening out her soft pink sweater as she spoke. Jean was nodding, murmuring thoughtfully, "She's got a point there, Scott, out of all four of us girls, Kitty _is_ the best choice..." Her eyes narrowed, however, as a thought occurred to her.   
"Except that _Pop! Goes The Music Video_ will probably be putting the "Panama" video with Lance and the girls in heavy rotation, if you catch my drift," the statuesque redhead finished meaningfully. While Kitty tried her best to look innocent and pretend her earlier outburst had never happened, the other four X-Men had no trouble conjuring up a mental image of Kitty going berserk and pulling a Wolverine on her hapless unsuspecting co-host and the innocent little teenyboppers after one too many viewings of a music video depicting her boyfriend partying with scantily-clad groupies.   
"Eh heh..." Scott's voice trailed off, before he turned adoring eyes on Jean and began to plead, "Jean, the most wonderful, _caring_ girlfriend a guy could ever have..." Jean backed away from him warily, desperately wracking her brain for some excuse, any excuse to worm out of hosting a show where she would be surrounded by mindlessly screaming teenyboppers screeching their lungs out at every move she made.   
"Uh, you see, the funniest thing, I can't really audition for the hosting job...because...because, um...Kitty and I already have jobs!" she finally finished lamely. Scott leaned back, startled, before questioning in unison with Kitty's own confused mumble, "You do?" Jean was blushing as red as a fire engine, as she stammered out guiltily, "Of course. Remember what I told you guys the other night during dinner? Kitty and I had already auditioned for roles in the musical that the local theater's going to be staging for the next six weeks." Kitty's eyes lit up as she remembered.   
"Oh, yeah!" A puzzled expression appeared on her features, as she wondered out loud, "But I never expected to actually land any roles."   
"Well, the letters just arrived today, confirming that we'd been selected for very important roles, where they would be needing us every day after school for rehearsals," Jean muttered quickly, making a mental note to convince the casting director to accept herself and Kitty--at any cost. Scott, meanwhile, had turned despairingly to a certain blonde bombshell.   
"Tabitha...?" His voice trailed off pleadingly, as said blonde bombshell quickly backed away.   
"Hey, not that I have anything against hosting a teenybopper crapfest or wanting to help you out, Scooter-boy," Tabitha began nervously. "But think about it--you guys don't have to live with the brainless boys. If I ever get caught dressed in pastel pinks and sucking up to Alison Blair and that boy band BOYZ, there is no freakin' way they'll _ever_ let me forget it!" 

"Ah hah! Finally, after having to read through that stupid interview with that Italian slut Asia Argentina What'sHerName, it's about damn time the Guns N' Roses article surfaced!" Rogue's triumphant cry switched all the attention onto her, as Scott, Jean, Kitty, and Tabitha all turned to look at the gothic beauty. Rogue's olive-green eyes narrowed suspiciously, as she growled irritably, "What are you all looking at?" Scott, Jean and Kitty quickly backed away, but Tabitha was not to be bothered with manners, as she stalked up directly to the green-clad X-girl and chirped sunnily, "Hey, you'll be perfect for the job!" Rogue's eyes widened in dismay, as she sputtered in protest, "But you...but I...but Kitty...but I don't know a thing about teenyboppers! Why the hell should I do this?!"   
"Well, do you currently have a job?" Tabitha grilled in that maddening voice of hers. Rogue scowled, throwing down her glossy magazine and drawing herself to her full height as though to present a challenge.   
"No, I don't!" she gritted out through clenched teeth. "Got a problem with that?" Tabitha backed off--but only slightly--as she sang out, "Hey, don't blow a casket; it's just that since Scott, Jean, and Kitty all supposedly have jobs, that kind of leaves you as the only one who's sitting around on her hands with nothing to do. It's about time you started pulling your own weight around here, hon."   
"Oh, please!" Rogue exploded. "Singing stupid jingles while dressed like a human cheeseburger is far from being an official job! Why doesn't Scott apply for the hosting position, especially since he hates his current job so much?!"   
"Well...for one thing, I really don't think I have the cleavage for the pastel pink Alison Blair tank top that the station makes their female co-hostess wear," Scott spoke up dryly. Rogue sighed, alternating from glaring at her supposed loyal friends to glaring at the television screen, where _Pop!_ was currently playing a video by some interracial rap duo named after an ice cream flavor. Finally, she threw up her hands in defeat, unwittingly sending her magazine flying through the air and chucking it at Tabitha's smugly smirking face.   
"All right, all right! So I'll apply for the stupid hosting position!" she finally sulked. Her dark green eyes flashed, as she added, "But I can assure you one thing right now: I hardly think I'll get the job."   
"Don't worry," Tabitha mumbled, gingerly rubbing the red-purple bruise that Rogue's magazine had caused when it hit her squarely on the forehead the way bird droppings always happen to land on someone's nice new shirt. "With the help of none other than Tabitha Smith, that job is practically yours!" 

* * *

*Well, here it is, the long-awaited (don't I wish!) and long-delayed (eh heh, oops) first chapter of Rogue's part. I know it's not much, and I'm afraid that updates from now on are going to be farther in between; I'm sorry, I guess I'd forgotten just how much teachers love to torture their students (case in point: I was bombarded with four tests throughout the course of one friggin' week, and it's not even October yet!). I'll do my best to work as fast as possible in completing Chapter Two in TRHell, which will probably concentrate on the actual audition itself, as well as introducing the first original character, Rogue's co-host Reese Clayton. Look for it before the next week is over, while I may not be able to update as often as I could during Lance and Pietro's section, I can at least guarantee a minimum of one chapter per week. I think so, anyway...x_x 


	13. Chapter Twelve: Oops, Tabby Did It Again...

**Chapter Twelve: Oops...Tabby Did It Again!**

* * *

A line of leggy, busty valley girls with dyed hair and crammed into low-cut minidresses and heels stood waiting in line, occasionally checking their makeup or fluffing their hair in front of little handheld mirrors. At that moment, one Tabitha Smith rounded the corner, dragging Rogue with her as she pushed and shoved her way to the front of the line.   
"Out of my way, sister...Yeah, I mean you...Hey, cool dress, gotta tell me where'd ya get that later, hon...C'mon, shoo, two hot mamas coming through..." she chattered, happily ignoring the indignant cries from the bottled blonde bimbos as she blatantly cut in line. She finally settled at three places from the front of the line, and cracked her knuckles, letting out a satisfied sigh.   
"Hah, dumb blondes! Oh, no, wait, _I'm_ a blonde, too! Oops," Tabitha chirped, speaking more to herself considering how Rogue was busying herself nervously glancing around at the competition and paying zero attention to the blonde who had just called her own kind dumb.   
"I don't know about this, Tabby...all those other girls stand a way better chance of getting picked for hosting a teenybopper crapfest than I do," Rogue murmured warily, absently tucking a snowy-white strand of hair behind her ears. Tabitha stopped gloating about how dumb those other blondes were, tapping her index finger against her chin as she pondered over this dilemma.   
"Hmm...you _do_ have a point there..." Her voice trailed off, before she suddenly seemed to get an idea, and snapped her fingers. "I've got it--let's get out of here!" And before Rogue could protest, the bubbly blonde had yanked her out of the very line they'd just cut into, and toward the backstage area.   
"Uh...Tabitha, the auditions are being held in the opposite direction," Rogue pointed out grouchily. Tabitha waved her hands back and forth, ignoring the gothic belle's protests as she scanned around. Spotting a lone assistant producer in her early twenties leaning in a corner and sipping lukewarm coffee from a white Styrofoam cup, Tabitha snapped her fingers, zooming in on her unsuspecting victim.   
"Ah hah! That's the one!" Turning to Rogue, she spoke nonchalantly, "Here, go ahead and zap her, and take her clothes." Had it been a _Roadrunner_ cartoon, Rogue's eyes would have bugged out of her head, with her jaw dropping literally down to her knees.   
"What?!" she exploded, half-shrieking and half-hissing the single word as she whirled around to face the blonde bombshell so fast, she nearly tripped and fell over her heeled black boots. Tabitha, meanwhile, was ignoring the look of outrage on Rogue's face as she chattered on breezily, "Well, it's easy, see: you want to eliminate the competition, all you have to do is pose as the person in charge and send them scramming, leaving you as the sole person auditioning to fill Mary Sue's position!" Rogue hesitated.   
"Well, the Institute _could_ really use the money this job will pull in; I mean, God knows Scott's not making much as Der Wienerschnitzel, and--Hey, wait a minute! I'm one of the X-Men! I can't be running around zapping people for fun!" she suddenly screeched. Tabitha clucked her tongue impatiently.   
"It's not for fun, hon--hey, cool, I rhymed!" Tabitha paused to gloat, but at Rogue's impatient glare, quickly cleared her throat and plowed on. "Anyway, you're not just running around zapping people for fun--although I really don't see why not--you're doing this for charity. Namely, the poor little X-Men, abandoned by their supposed legal guardians and left penniless and nearly on the streets to fend for themselves, while their supposed leader runs off to the mall from five-to-nine everyday to dance around as a human cheeseburger, and--!"   
"Listen, Tabitha, you may have pulled me into some harebrained schemes before--namely, this whole Mary Sue teenybopper crap--but there is no freakin' way you are going to _ever_ convince me to zap a poor, innocent human being just so I could land a job at some little TV station!" Rogue fumed. 

Five minutes later, Tabitha dragged a woozy Rogue back to the room where the auditions were to be held, wearing the assistant producer's business suit and name tag and ignoring her gothic green-clad friend's mutterings about how no brainless teenyboppers looking for a place to make out better stumble across that janitor's closet. 

* * *

"I still don't see how posing as Assistant Producer No. 43 is going to help, Tabitha," Rogue hissed grumpily, glancing around at all the bleached blonde teenyboppers crowding the audition room.   
"Hey, the name's--" Tabitha paused to glance down at her name tag, "--the name's Crystallina now...Ew, what kind of name is _Crystallina?!"_ Her nose wrinkled in distaste, before she quickly went on. "Anyway, you'll see. Just stay here, and let me do all the dirty work, 'kay?!"   
"But--" Before Rogue had a chance to sputter out a protest, Tabitha/Crystallina had once again happily shoved her way to the front of the line, before finally scaling a metal folding chair and cupping her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice.   
"All right, people, quiet! C'mon, shut up already, I'm trying to convey very important information here!" she hollered. After the teenybopper Mary Sue wannabes had finally quieted down, Tabitha cleared her throat dramatically, before launching into her improvised speech that she'd come up with while Rogue was busy zapping the real Crystallina.   
"Okay, on behalf of the producers of _Pop! Goes The Music Video, _we would like to thank you all for showing up to audition today; it is always nice to see what an enthusiastic and devoted fanbase we have," she began authoritatively, sounding surprisingly professional, even Rogue had to admit. "Now, unfortunately, before the actual auditions will take place, I'm afraid we're going to have to ask all of you a few questions. Nothing too hard, you won't burn up a single one of those six brain cells in your little bottled blonde heads...Oops, did I just say that last part out loud?" Fortunately for Tabitha, the Mary Sue wannabes were busy screaming madly as though Justin Timberlake's face had just popped up on Tabitha's head, and didn't seem to understand that they'd just been insulted.   
"Now, let's get these questions underway. Just raise your hand if this applies to you, okay?" Tabitha paused for effect, before continuing. "First question: How many of you can't read?" Tabitha counted all the hands that had shot up, before nodding and saying, "Mmm hmm...All right, you're dismissed. You see, we need someone who can actually read the teleprompter. Ta ta, ladies, better luck next time!" Harrumphing, she went on in all her assistant producer glory, "Okay, second question: How many of you can name all four members of 98°? Wait, are there even four members in that group...?" Taking notice of the majority of the remaining hands that had gone up, Tabitha finally spoke, "Whoops, sorry, can't take you gals either. Too obsessive and teenyboppery, even for _our_ tastes, if you actually know the names of all four of those temperature fruits...All right, final question!" Tabitha's eyes narrowed, as she noticed that there were still two more girls, in addition to Rogue, who had remained. _Great--two teenyboppers who can read, _and_ who're not overly obsessed with boy bands! I never thought I'd have to go this far..._Now_ what do I do?_ Tabitha frowned, biting down on her lower lip. Well, she could always ask Rogue to just zap them... 

Seeing a familiar face wandering dazedly down the halls like he'd made a wrong turn while going to the local bar--which he'd probably had--Tabitha felt a nasty little smirk beginning to tug at her lips. She knew just what to do with at least one of the remaining teenyboppers. Nah, actually, she was feeling evil enough to sic two of those on him; he deserved it, especially for the way he'd acted when she'd stumbled down into the breakfast room that one morning...She didn't look _that_ hideous when she'd just gotten out of bed! Turning to the two remaining Mary Sue wannabes, one a busty bottled blonde, the other an over lipsticked fake redhead, Tabitha spoke, jerking her thumb toward her poor, unsuspecting victim as she did so, "Hey, you see that man over there? Muscular built, scruffy unshaved face, owlish blue-black hair, looks like he's always pissed off at the world and wants to punch someone's face in? Yeah, _that_ guy in the black shirt and blue jeans...Well, he just happens to be in charge of who gets to replace Miss Mary Sue as the new co-hostess of _Pop! Goes The Music Video, _so I suggest you go over there and, ahem, _acquaint_ yourselves with him."   
"Oh, okay," the teenyboppers trilled cluelessly, before bouncing off after the "guy in charge of who gets to replace Mary Sue", while Tabitha called out after them, "Don't forget to show off your knowledge of pop music by singing "I'm A Slave 4 U" as much as possible!" 

At that moment, a tall, toned, and tanned young man in his early twenties appeared in the room, dressed in an outfit so preppy that it would have made even Scott puke and with his glossy jet-black hair carefully arranged so that one lock fell precisely into his dark green eyes.   
"Hi, my name is Reese Clayton, and as you should know, I'm the hunky male co-host of _Pop! Goes The Music Video,"_ he introduced himself. Rogue's auburn eyebrows nearly flew off her forehead upon hearing his words. She must have misunderstood him...Surely no guy would actually introduce himself as the "hunky" _anything,_ would he? But then again, seeing how he spent his days screaming and jumping around like a little valley girl amidst a throng of teenyboppers...Rogue decided to brush off her astonishment, and instead concentrated on forcing a great big phony smile on her face.   
"I'm, er, Rogue, and this is my friend Tabitha." She turned around to motion to the slender blonde, and a weird expression settled into her features upon seeing the ogly, starry-eyed look her energetic friend was sporting. "Um, Tabby...?"   
"So, I guess then that you're the only one who bothered to show up to audition for Mary Sue's part. Darn it, I had been hoping for more members of our Teenybopper Army to have the dedication that you do," Reese sighed dramatically. Rogue scowled.   
"Yeah, whatever, so tell me again how much money will I be earning?" she wanted to know. Reese paused, running a hand through his jet-black hair.   
"Well, as my new co-hostess by default, I guess you will be making--" he started to say, when Tabitha seemed to snap herself out of her trance and abruptly spoke up for the first time since Reese entered the room.   
"Ah, but you see, she is not the new co-hostess of the gorgeous Reese Clayton by default." Tabitha then dropped the bomb. "For you see, I am the only other member of the Teenybopper Army who had the dedication to Reese Clayton to show up and audition to be his co-hostess." Rogue's olive-green eyes widened in shock.   
"Tabitha! I can't believe you!" she sputtered. Tabitha turned around, before saying airily, "Well, you know the old saying, all's fair in love and war!" Rogue didn't know whether to laugh into Tabitha's face or faint in shock...or shake some sense into her blonde friend...or turn around and slap the living daylights out of Reese Clayton, because...well, quite frankly because it had been a long, teenypop-saturated day that had put her into a bitchy mode, and his somehow capturing the heart of Tabitha wasn't exactly going to shorten it, so she had to take out her anger on_ somebody! _Reese, meanwhile, was smirking proudly.   
"Well, I can't say I'm surprised, after all, the ladies love Reese Clayton, because he's Reese Clayton, the super-hunky co-host of _Pop! Goes The Music Video, _not to mention the fact that Reese Clayton also has an impeccable sense of style, as well as the fact that Reese Clayton--" he started to babble. Rogue felt an incoming headache.   
"Grr--Reese, stop referring to yourself in the third person, and Tabitha, if it's a war you want, then a war you'll get, you double-crossing little bottled blonde teenybopper from Barbie Hell!" she hissed, before furiously stalking out of the _Pop! Goes The Music Video_ studios to hatch an evil scheme. 

* * *

Scott and Evan gave identical stony glares, before replying in unison between clenched teeth, "NO!" Rogue groaned, looking like she wanted to tear her hair out in frustration.   
"Please? Listen, I _really_ need to win this beauty/talent contest that they're holding, it's the only way I'll get the job, and Lord knows we desperately need the money!" she begged. Scott seethed, "For the last time, Rogue, we are not about to beat up two judges and take their places just to tip the vote in your favor! It's unethical, it totally lacks integrity, it completely disregards the X-Men code of honor, and besides--"   
"Besides, I've got a date with Graciela, the hot foreign exchange student who literally doesn't know how to say no, on the same day this pageant is being staged," Evan chipped in. Rogue's face contorted with desperation.   
"But I just _know_ that Tabitha will somehow manage to sucker in her boys to help her cheat to win, and you'll just be evening the odds. Listen, I really, really, _really_ need this job; I mean, honestly, I'm the only one who stands a chance of earning any money out of all of us: Scott, you're parading around singing jingles dressed as a fat hamburger, Evan, the only job interview you and Kurt ever managed to get was with a dysfunctional heavy metal band, and you actually managed to lose that gig to the Brotherhood boys, and so far, Jean and Kitty aren't exactly being paid for rehearsals, now are they?!" Rogue argued. Seeing the two boys beginning to relent, the gothic belle pressed on.   
"Besides," she added with a smirk, "you all don't want to be sucking on the thawed out meat-like patties that Scott brings home from "work" for the next several months, now do you? Believe it or not, this teenybopper crapfest can afford to pay some pretty good money...enough to treat us all to a steak dinner."   
"All right, all right!" Evan was the first one to give in, ignoring the incredulous look that Scott shot him. "We'll do it! So, where are the judges dressing rooms again?" 

* * *

"I can't believe we're really doing this," Scott grumbled, shifting uncomfortably in his seat behind the judges' table. Settled comfortably on a folding chair beside him, Evan grinned, before clapping the older boy on the back and saying nonchalantly, "Aw, don't worry, man, it'll be a cinch! All we do is vote for Rogue, land her this gig, and one week from today, we can all be feasting on steak dinners! Sounds like a good plan to me." Scott let out a grudging sigh.   
"Yes, but--" he started to protest. 

At that moment, Reese Clayton walked into the room, basking in the glow of being screamed at from the teenybopper audience as he chirped, "Hey, there, kids, Reese Clayton here, and with me are the two potential replacements for our dear departed Mary Sue--and I mean that literally, because Mary Sue has departed to play the secret fifth member of the Fantastic Four who just happens to be multi-billionaire Bruce Wayne's long-lost daughter and is also set to capture the heart of Spiderman who's just conveniently broken up with his girlfriend because she turned into a bitch for no reason at all--and anyways, here are her potential replacements, Rogue and Tabitha!" He waited while the teenyboppers screeched themselves hoarse, before going on, "Now, throughout the course of this pageant, our lovely contestants will face off in a beauty and talent competition, but first let us introduce the five judges who will be voting on who gets the honor of sitting in my lap as my new co-hostess for _Pop! Goes The Music Video!"_ The cameras swung to the five judges, seated behind their table, as Reese began reading off from little 3x5 cards. 

"Judge No. 1, why don't you stand up so we can introduce you to our fans?" he chirped brightly, as behind the table, Evan elbowed Scott and hissed out of the corner of his mouth, "That's you!" Scott hastily got up, cringing slightly under the assault of the screaming and wildly cheering teenyboppers, as Reese read off his card, "All rightey, let's see: Ah hah! Judge Número Uno is a former Playboy bunny and exotic dancer named Chantal Diamond, a.k.a. the Diamond Doll!" Scott's mouth dropped wide open, while Reese glanced over uncertainly at the rather masculine "Diamond Doll", before clearing his throat awkwardly and harrumphing, "Eh heh...I see she's gone ahead and had some, um, cosmetic surgery since her, um, Playboy days...Moving on!" Looking slightly flushed as a horrified and humiliated Scott sunk back into his seat and glared over at the guilty-looking Rogue, Reese hurriedly read on as Evan/Judge No. 2 proudly got up from his seat. Tripping over his words, Reese introduced Evan as, "Judge No. 2 hails all the way from Tokyo, Japan, as the manager of that awesome girl group Watashi Ai Strawberry! Please help me give a great big _Pop! Goes The Music Video_ welcome to Judge No. 2, Takao Yoshihiro Sakamoto Fukunaga!" All eyes turned to gawk at the so very Japanese Evan, as his eyes bugged out in dismay and he muttered uncertainly, "Um...sayonara?" before quickly snapping back down into his seat. As Reese introduced the third judge without incident, a former Miss Southern California named Gwen Stratigias, Scott hissed at Evan, "Sayonara means good-bye in Japanese! You should have said konnichi-wa!" Evan glared back at him, before grumbling sourly, "Oh, whatever!" Thankfully for the two X-Men, the teenyboppers in the audience had failed to notice their little scuffle, and were all watching intently as Reese introduced the fourth judge.   
"All right, on to our fourth judge," he began, as a rather familiar lanky, unkempt, greasy-haired teenage boy stood up awkwardly. Scott and Evan both snapped up in unison, as they glared across from Gwen Stratigias and hollered, "Toad!", who simply smirked. Reese ignored the outburst from, um, Diamond Doll and Takao Yoshihiro Sakamoto Fukunaga, as he chattered happily, "Our fourth judge is the heir apparent of the Americana Brand Porcelain Dolls...and proud organizer of the Annual Bayville Gay And Lesbian Festival! Please welcome Chachi Dahl!" The smug smirk disappeared from Todd's face, as his mouth dropped open in horror and he let out an indignant yelp of, "What?! I'm gay?! Tabby, you promised Wanda's watching my TV debut, yo! She can't think I'm gay!" A second, even more dismayingly familiar boy, this one sporting an unmistakable mane of platinum-colored hair, coolly reached up and seated the still sputtering Todd back into his seat, muttering, "Cool it, Chachi," as Reese continued to introduce the judges.   
"All right, our fifth and final judge is a, um, okay, let me get this right." Reese cleared his throat as Pietro proudly stood up and posed for the screaming teenyboppers.   
"Okay, here we go: Judge No. 5, he be a homie from da hood, Lil' Dawg, yo!" Reese spoke in horrific ebonics, as Pietro leaned back, stunned, before lamely coming up with the excuse of, "Um, you see...I be black...but I also be Michael Jackson's bleach specialist, ya dig? Eh heh."   
"Oh, well that explains why you look like a snotty, arrogant white boy with bleached hair," Reese murmured, satisfied, while Pietro's eyebrows shot up and he sulked, insulted, "For the last frickin' time, I have naturally silver hair! Us Maximoffs--um, I mean, us Dawgs--do not bleach, because we are already perfect, and another thing, Reed--"   
"Um, that's Reese," the youthful host broke in. Pietro brushed him off.   
"Whatever, Weed, as I was saying--" he resumed ranting, before Reese finally cut him off.   
"As I was saying," he broke in hastily, "now that the judges have been introduced, let's get this pageant underway!" 

* * *

*Okay, okay, so I know I'm not updating as frequently as I used to, but hey, one chapter per week is still pretty good, if you ask me! ^_^ Anyway, I had been hoping to cram the pageant into this chapter and just get the whole auditioning process over with so we could start with the actual _Pop!_ show and introduce the teen idols next chapter, but since I couldn't do that without making this part go on forever, it now looks like Unlucky Chapter Thirteen (~_^) will feature the actual pageant, as well as probably Rogue getting that teenybopper makeover she mentioned during her cameo in Lance and Pietro's section. 


End file.
